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MINE OWN PEOPLE 


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RUDYARD KIPLING 

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CONTENTS 


PAGE 

Introduction . 3 

Bimi ... 21 

Namgay Doola 31 

The Recrudescence of Imray 50 

Moti Guj — Mutineer 70 

The Mutiny of the Mavericks 82 

At the End of the Passage 115 

The Incarnation of Krishna Mulvaney . 150 


The Man Who Was 191 

On Greenhow Hill 221 



INTRODUCTION 


It would be difficult to answer the gen- 
eral question whether the books of the 
world grow, as they multiply, as much bet- 
ter as one might suppose they ought, with 
such a lesson of wasteful experiment spread 
perpetually behind them. There is no 
doubt, however, that in one direction we 
profit largely by this education: whether 
or not we have become wiser to fashion, 
we have certainly become keener to enjoy. 
We have acquired the sense of a particular 
quality which is precious beyond all 
others — so precious as to make us wonder 
where, at such a rate, our posterity will 
look for it, and how they will pay for it. 
After tasting many essences we find fresh- 
ness the sweetest of all. We yearn for it, 
we watch for it and lie in wait for it, and 
when we catch it on the wing (it flits by so 
fast) we celebrate our capture with extrav- 
agance. We feel that after so much has 
come and gone it is more and more of a 
feat and a tour dc force to be fresh. The 


3 


Introduction 


4 

tormenting part of the phenomenon is that, 
in any particular key, it can happen but 
once — by a sad failure of the law that 
inculcates the repetition of goodness. It is 
terribly a matter of accident; emulation and 
imitation have a fatal eflfect upon it. It 
is easy to see, therefore, what importance 
the epicure may attach to the brief moment 
of its bloom. While that lasts we all are 
epicures. 

This helps to explain, I think, the unmis- 
takable intensity of the general relish for 
Mr. Rudyard Kipling. His bloom lasts, 
from month to month, almost surpris- 
ingly — by which I mean that he has not 
worn out even by active exercise the par- 
ticular property that made us all so pre- 
cipitately drop everything else to attend to 
him. He has many others which he will 
doubtless always keep; but a part of the 
potency attaching to his freshness, what 
makes it as exciting as a drawing of lots, 
is our instinctive conviction that he can not, 
in the nature of things, keep that; so that 
our enjoyment of him, so long as the mir- 
acle is still wrought, has both the charm 
of confidence and the charm of suspense. 
And then there is the further charm, with 
Mr. Kipling, that this same freshness is 
such a very strange affair of its kind — so 
mixed and various and cynical, and, in cer- 
tain lights, so contradictory of itself. The 


Introduction 


5 

extreme recentness of his inspiration is as 
enviable as the tale is startling that his pro- 
ductions tell of his being at home, domesti- 
cated and initiated, in this wicked and 
weary world. At times he strikes us as 
shockingly precocious, at others as serenely 
wise. On the whole, he presents himself 
as a strangely clever youth who has. stolen 
the formidable mask of maturity and rushes 
about, making people jump with the deep 
sounds, the sportive exaggerations of tone, 
that issue from its painted lips. He has 
this mark of a real vocation, that different 
spectators may like him — must like him, 
I should almost say — for different things; 
and this refinement of attraction, that to 
those who reflect even upon their pleasures 
he has as much to say as to those who 
never reflect upon anything. Indeed there 
is a certain amount of room for surprise in 
the fact that, being so much the sort of 
figure that the hardened critic likes to meet, 
he should also be tlie sort of figure that 
inspires the multitude with confidence — 
for a complicated air is, in general, the last 
thing that does this. 

By the critic who likes to meet such a 
bristling adventurer as Mr. Kipling I mean 
of course the critic for whom the happy 
accident of character, whatever form it may 
take, is more of a bribe to interest than the 
promise of some character cherished in 


6 


Introduction 


theory — the appearance of justifying some 
foregone conclusion as to what a writer or 
a book “ ought,” in the Ruskinian sense, 
to be; the critic, in a word, who has, 
d priori, no rule for a literary production 
but that it shall have genuine life. Such 
a critic (he gets much more out of his 
opportunities, I think, than the other sort) 
likes a writer exactly in proportion as he 
is a challenge, an appeal to interpretation, 
intelligence, ingenuity, to what is elastic 
in the critical mind — in proportion indeed 
as he may be a negation of things familiar 
and taken for granted. He feels in this 
case how much more play and sensation 
there is for himself. 

Mr. Kipling, then, has the character that 
furnishes plenty of play and of vicarious 
experience — that makes any perceptive 
reader foresee a rare luxury. He has the 
great merit of being a compact and con- 
venient illustration of the surest source of 
interest in any painter of life — that of hav- 
ing an identity as marked as a window- 
frame. He is one of the illustrations, taken 
near at hand, that help to clear up the 
vexed question in the novel or the tale, of 
kinds, camps, schools, distinctions, the 
right way and the wrong way; so very 
positively does he contribute to the show- 
ing that there are just as many kinds, as 
many ways, as many forms and degrees 


Introduction 


7 

of the “ right,” as there are personal points 
in view. It is the blessing of the art he 
practices that it is made up of experience 
conditioned, infinitely, in this personal 
way — the sum of the feeling of life as re- 
produced by innumerable natures; natures 
that feel through all their differences, testify 
through their diversities. These differ- 
ences, which make the identity, are of the 
individual; they form the channel by which 
life flows through him, and how much he is 
able to give us of life — in other words, 
how much he appeals to us — depends on 
whether they form it solidly. 

This hardness of the conduit, cemented 
with a rare assurance, is perhaps the most 
striking idiosyncrasy of Mr. Kipling; and 
what makes it more remarkable is that 
accident of his extreme youth which, if we 
talk about him at all, we can not affect to 
ignore. I can not pretend to give a biog- 
raphy or a chronology of the author of 
“ Soldiers Three,” but I can not overlook 
the general, the importunate fact that, con- 
fidently as he has caught the trick and 
habit of this sophisticated world, he has 
not been long of it. His extreme youth 
is indeed what I may call his window-bar — 
the support on which he somewhat rowdily 
leans while he looks down at the human 
scene with his pipe in his teeth; just as his 
other conditions (to mention only some of 


8 


Introduction 


them), are his prodigious facility, which is 
only less remarkable than his stiff selec- 
tion ; his unabashed temperament, his flexi- 
ble talent, his smoking-room manner, his 
familiar friendship with India — established 
so rapidly, and so completely under his 
control; his delight in battle, his “cheek” 
about women — and indeed about men and 
about everything; his determination not to 
be duped, his “ imperial ” fiber, his love of 
the inside view, the private soldier and the 
primitive man. I must add further to this 
list of attractions the remarkable way in 
which he makes us aware that he has been 
put up to the whole thing directly by life 
(miraculously, in his teens), and not by the 
communications of others. These ele- 
ments, and many more, constitute a singu- 
larly robust little literary character (our 
use of the diminutive is altogether a note 
of endearment and enjoyment) which, if it 
has the rattle of high spirits and is in no 
degree apologetic or shrinking, yet offers 
a very liberal pledge in the way of good 
faith and immediate performance. Mr. 
Kipling’s performance comes off before the 
more circumspect have time to decide 
whether they like him or not, and if you 
have seen it once you will be sure to return 
to the show. He makes us prick up our 
ears to the good news that in the smoking- 
room too there may be artists; and indeed 


Introduction 9 

to an intimation still more refined — that 
the latest development of the modern also 
may be, most successfully, for the canny 
artist to put his victim off his guard by 
imitating the amateur (superficially, of 
course) to the life. 

These, then, are some of the reasons why 
Mr. Kipling may be dear to the analyst as 
well as, M. Renan says, to the simple. The 
simple may like him because he is wonder- 
ful about India, and India has not been 
“done;” while there is plenty left for the 
morbid reader in the surprises of his skill 
and the fwritiire of his form, which are so 
oddly independent of any distinctive lit- 
erar}^ note in him, any bookish associa- 
tion. It is as one of the morbid that the 
writer of these remarks (which doubtless 
only too shamefully betray his character) 
exposes himself as most consentingly under 
the spell. The freshness arising from a 
subject that — by a good fortune I do not 
mean to underestimate — has never been 
“ done,” is after all less of an affair to build 
upon than the freshness residing in the 
temper of the artist. Happy indeed is Mr. 
Kipling, who can command so much of 
both kinds. It is still as one of the mor- 
bid, no doubt — that is, as one of those 
who are- capable of sitting up all night for 
a new impression of talent, of scouring the 
trodden field for one little spot of green — ■ 


lO 


Introduction 


that I find our young author quite most 
curious in his air, and not only in his air, 
but in his evidently very real sense, of 
knowing his way about life. Curious in 
the highest degree and well worth attention 
is such an idiosyncrasy as this in a young 
Anglo-Saxon. We meet it with familiar 
frequency in the budding talents of France, 
and it startles and haunts us for an hour. 
After an hour, however, the mystery is apt 
to fade, for we find that the wondrous initi- 
ation is not in the least general, is only 
exceedingly special, and is, even with this 
limitation, very often rather conventional. 
In a word, it is with the ladies that the 
young Frenchman takes his ease, and more 
particularly with ladies selected expressly 
to make this attitude convincing. When 
they have let him off, the dimnesses too 
often encompass him. But for Mr. Kip- 
ling there are no dimnesses anywhere, and 
if the ladies are indeed violently distinct 
they are not only strong notes in a univer- 
sal loudness. This loudness fills the ears 
of Mr. Kipling’s admirers (it lacks sweet- 
ness, no doubt, for those who are not of 
the number), and there is really only one 
strain that is absent from it — the voice, as 
it were, of the civilized man; in whom I of 
course also include the civilized woman. 
But this is an element that for the present 


Introduction 1 1 

one does not miss — every other note is so 
articulate and direct. 

It is a part of the satisfaction the author 
gives us that he can make us speculate as 
to whether he will be able to complete his 
picture altogether (this is as far as we pre- 
sume to go in meddling with the question 
of his future) without bringing in the com- 
plicated soul. On the day he does so, if 
he handles it with anything like the clever- 
ness he has already shown, the expectation 
of his friends will take a great bound. 
Meanwhile, at any rate, we have Mulvaney, 
and Mulvaney is after all tolerably compli- 
cated. lie is only a six-foot saturated Irish 
private, but he is a considerable pledge of 
more to come. Hasn’t he, for that matter, 
the tongue of a hoarse siren, and hasn’t he 
also mysteries and infinitudes almost Car- 
lylese? Since I am speaking of him" I may 
as well say that, as an evocation, he has 
probably led captive those of Mr. Kipling’s 
readers who have most given up resistance. 
He is a piece of portraiture of the largest, 
vividest kind, growing and growing on the 
painter’s hands without ever outgrowing 
them. I can’t help regarding him, in a 
certain sense, as Mr. Kipling’s tutelary 
deity — a landmark in the direction in 
which it is open to him to look furthest. If 
the author will only go as far in this direc- 
tion as Mulvaney is capable of taking him 


1 2 Introduction 

(and the inimitable Irishman is, like Vol- 
taire’s Habakkiik, capable de tout), he may 
still discover a treasure and find a reward 
for the services he has rendered the winner 
of Dinah Shadd. I hasten to add that the 
truly appreciative reader should surely 
have no quarrel with the primitive element 
in Mr. Kipling’s subject-matter, or with 
what, for want of a better name, I may call 
his love of low life. What is that but 
essentially a part of his freshness? And 
for what part of his freshness are we exactly 
more thankful than for just this smart 
jostle that he gives the old stupid super- 
stition that the amiability of a story-teller 
is the amiability of the people he repre- 
sents — that their vulgarity, or depravity, 
or gentility, or fatuity are tantamount to 
the same qualities in the painter itself? A 
blow from which, apparently, it will not 
easily recover is dealt this infantine phil- 
osophy by Mr. Howells when, with the 
most distinguished dexterity and all the 
detachment of a master, he handles some 
of the clumsiest, crudest, most human 
things in life — answering surely thereby 
the play-goers in the sixpenny gallery who 
howl at the representative of the villain 
when he comes before the curtain. 

Nothing is more refreshing than this 
active, disinterested sense of the real; it is 
doubtless the quality for the want of more 


Introduction 


13 

of which our English and American fiction 
has turned so wofully stale. We are rid- 
den by the old conventionalities of type 
and small proprieties of observance — by 
the foolish baby-formula (to put it sketch- 
ily) of the picture and the subject. Mr. 
Kipling has all the air of being disposed to 
lift the whole business off the nursery car- 
pet, and of being perhaps even more able 
than he is disposed. One must hasten of 
course to parenthesize that there is not, 
intrinsically, a bit more luminosity in treat- 
ing of low life and of primitive man than 
of those whom civilization has kneaded to 
a finer paste: the only luminosity in either 
case is in the intelligence with which the 
thing is done. But it so happens that, 
among ourselves, the frank, capable out- 
look, when turned upon the vulgar major- 
ity, the coarse, receding edges of the social 
perspective, borrows a charm from being 
new; such a charm as, for instance, repeti- 
tion has already despoiled it of among the 
French — the hapless French who pay the 
penalty as well as enjoy the glow of living 
intellectually so much faster than we. It 
is the most inexorable part of our fate that 
we grow tired of everything, and of course 
in due time we may grow tired even of 
what explorers shall come back to tell us 
about the great grimy condition, or, Avith 
unprecedented items and details, about the 


Introduction 


H 

gray middle state which darkens into it. 
But the explorers, bless them! may have 
a long day before that; it is early to trouble 
about reactions, so that we must give them 
the benefit of every presumption. We are 
thankful for any boldness and any sharp 
curiosity, and that is why we are thankful 
for Mr. Kipling’s general spirit and for 
most of his excursions. 

Many of these, certainly, are into a 
region not to be designated as superficially 
dim, though indeed the author always 
reminds us that India is above all the land 
of mystery. A large part of his high 
spirits, and of ours, comes doubtless from 
the amusement of such vivid, heterogene- 
ous material, from the irresistible magic of 
scorching suns, subject empires, uncanny 
religions, uneasy garrisons and smoth- 
ered-up women — from heat and color and 
danger and dust. India is a portentous 
image, and we are duly awed by the famili- 
arities it undergoes at Mr. Kipling’s hand 
and by the fine impunity, the sort of for- 
tune that favors the brave, of his want of 
awe. An abject humility is not his strong 
point, but he gives us something instead 
of it — vividness and drollery, the vision 
and the thrill of many things, the misery 
and strangeness of most, the personal sense 
of a hundred queer contacts and risks. 
And then in the absence of respect he has 


Introduction 


15 

plenty of knowledge, and if knowledge 
should fail him he would have plenty of 
invention. Moreover, if invention should 
ever fail him, he would still have the lyric 
string and the patriotic chord, on which 
he plays admirably; so that it may be said 
he is a man of resources. What he gives 
us, above all, is the feeling of the English 
manner and the English blood in condi- 
tions they have made at once so much and 
so little their own ; with manifestations gro- 
tesque enough in some of his satiric 
sketches and deeply impressive in some of 
his anecdotes of individual responsibility. 

His Indian impressions divide themselves 
into three groups, one of which, I think, 
very much outshines the others. First to 
be mentioned are the tales of native life, 
curious glimpses of custom and supersti- 
tion, dusky matters not beholden of the 
many, for which the author has a remark- 
able Uair. Then comes the social, the 
Anglo-Indian episode, the study of admin- 
istrative and military types, and of the won- 
derful rattling, riding ladies who, at Simla 
and more desperate stations, look out for 
husbands and lovers; often, it would seem, 
and husbands and lovers of others. The 
most brilliant group is devoted wholly 
to the common soldier, and of this 
series it appears to me that too much 
good is hardly to be said. Here Mr. 


i6 


Introduction 


Kipling, with all his off-handedness, is 
a master; for we are held not so much 
by the greater or less oddity of the 
particular yarn — sometimes it is scarcely 
a yarn at all, but something much less arti- 
ficial — as by the robust attitude of the nar- 
rator, who never arranges or glosses or 
falsifies, but makes straight for the com- 
mon and the characteristic. I have men- 
tioned the great esteem in which I hold 
Mulvaney — surely a charming man and 
one qualified to adorn a higher sphere. 
Mulvaney is a creation to be proud of, and 
his two comrades stand as firm on their 
legs. In spite of Mulvaney’s social possi- 
bilities, they are all three finished brutes; 
but it is precisely in the finish that we 
delight. Whatever Mr. Kipling may relate 
about them forever will encounter readers 
equally fascinated and unable fully to jus- 
tify their faith. 

Are not those literary pleasures after all 
the most intense which are the most per- 
verse and whimsical, and even indefensible? 
There is a logic in them somewhere, but 
it often lies below the plummet of criti- 
cism. The spell may be weak in a writer 
who has every reasonable and regular 
claim, and it may be irresistible in one who 
presents himself with a style corresponding 
to a bad hat. A good hat is better than 
a bad one, but a conjurer may wear either. 


Introduction 


17 

Many a reader will never be able to say 
what secret human force lays its hand upon 
him when Private Ortheris, having sworn 
“ quietly into the blue sky,” goes mad with 
homesickness by the yellow river and 
raves for the basest sights and sounds of 
London. I can scarcely tell why I think 
“ The Courting of Dinah Shadd ” a master- 
piece (though, indeed, I can make a shrewd 
guess at one of the reasons), nor would it 
be worth while perhaps to attempt to 
defend the same pretension in regard to 
“ On Greenhow Hill ” — much less to 
trouble the tolerant reader of these remarks 
with a statement of how many more per- 
formances in the nature of “ The End of the 
Passage” (quite admitting even that they 
might not represent Mr. Kipling at his 
best) I am conscious of a latent relish for. 
One might as well admit while one is about 
■ it that one has wept profusely over “ The 
I Drums of the Fore and Aft,” the history 
; of the “ Dutch courage ” of two dreadful 
dirty little boys, who, in the face of Afghans 
scarcely more dreadful, saved the reputa- 
tion of their regiment and perished, the 
least mawkishly in the world, in a squalor 
of battle incomparably expressed. People 
who know how peaceful they are them- 
selves and have no bloodshed to reproach 
themselves with needn’t scruple to mention 
the glamour that Mr. Kipling’s intense mil- 


Introduction 


i8 

itarism has for them, and how astonishing 
and contagious they find it, in spite of the 
unromantic complexion of it — the way it 
bristles with all sorts of uglinesses and 
technicalities. Perhaps that is why I go all 
the way even with “ The Gadsbys ” — the 
Gadsbys were so connected (uncomfort- 
ably, it is true) with the army. There is 
fearful fighting — or a fearful danger of 
it — in “ The Man Who Would be King: ” 
is that the reason we are deeply affected 
by this extraordinary tale? It is one of 
them, doubtless, for Mr. Kipling has many 
reasons, after all, on his side, though they 
don’t equally call aloud to be uttered. 

One more of them, at any rate, I must 
add to these unsystematized remarks — it 
is the one I spoke of a shrewd guess at in 
alluding to “ The Courting of Dinah 
Shadd.” The talent that produces such a 
tale is a talent eminently in harmony with 
the short story, and the short story is, on 
our side of the Channel and of the Atlantic, 
a mine which will take a great deal of work- 
ing. Admirable is the clearness with 
which Mr. Kipling perceives this — per- 
ceives what innumerable chances it gives, 
chances of touching life in a thousand dif- 
ferent places, taking it up in innumerable 
pieces, each a specimen and an illustration. 
In a word, he appreciates the episode, and 
there are signs to show that this shrewd- 


Introduction 


19 

ness will, in general, have long innings. It 
will find the detachable, compressible 
“case” and admirable, flexible form; the 
cultivation of which may well add to the 
mistrust already entertained by Mr. Kip- 
ling, if his manner does not betray him, for 
what is clumsy and tasteless in the time- 
honored practice of the “ plot.” It will for- 
tify him in the conviction that the vivid 
picture has a greater communicative value 
than the Chinese puzzle. There is little 
enough “ plot ” in such a perfect little piece 
of hard representation as “ The End of the 
Passage,” to cite again only the most sali- 
ent of twenty examples. 

But I am speaking of our author’s future, 
which is the luxury that I meant to forbid 
myself — precisely because the subject is 
so tempting. There is nothing in the world 
(for the prophet) so charming as to proph- 
esy, and as there is nothing so inconclusive 
the tendency should be repressed in pro- 
portion as the opportunity is good. There 
is a certain want of courtesy to a peculiarly 
contemporaneous present even in speculat- 
ing, with a dozen differential precautions, 
on the question of what will become in the 
later hours of the day of a talent that has 
got up so early. Mr. Kipling’s actual per- 
formance is like a tremendous walk before 
breakfast, making one welcome the idea 
of the meal, but consider with some alarm 


20 


Introduction 


the hours still to be traversed. Yet if his 
breakfast is all to come, the indications are 
that he will be more active than ever after 
he has had it. Among these indications 
are the unflagging character of his pace 
and the excellent form, as they say in ath- 
letic circles, in which he gets over the 
ground. We don’t detect him stumbling; 
on the contrary, he steps out quite as 
briskly as at first, and still more firmly. 
There is something zealous and craftsman- 
like in him which shows that he feels both 
joy and responsibility. A whimsical, wan- 
ton reader, haunted by a recollection of all 
the good things he has seen spoiled; by a 
sense of the miserable, or, at any rate, the 
inferior, in so many continuations and end- 
ings, is almost capable of perverting poetic 
justice to the idea that it would be even 
positively well for so surprising a producer 
to remain simply the fortunate, suggestive, 
unconfirmed and unqualified representative 
of what he has actually done. We can 
always refer to that. 

Henry James. 


BIMI 


The orang-outang in the big iron cage 
lashed to the sheep-pen began the discus- 
sion. The night was stiflingly hot, and as 
Hans Breitmann and I passed him, drag- 
ging our bedding to the fore-peak of the 
steamer, he roused himself and chattered 
obscenely. He had been caught some- 
where in the Malayan Archipelago, and 
was going to England to be exhibited at 
a shilling a head. For four days he had 
struggled, yelled, and wrenched at the 
heavy iron bars of his prison without ceas- 
ing, and had nearly slain a Lascar incau- 
tious enough to come within reach of the 
great hairy paw. 

“ It would be well for you, mine friend, 
if you was a liddle seasick,” said Hans 
Breitmann, pausing by the cage. “ You 
haf too much Ego in your Cosmos.” 

The orang-outang’s arm slid out negli- 
gently from between the bars. No one 
would have believed that it would make a 
sudden snake-like rush at the German’s 


21 


22 


Mine Own People 

breast. The thin silk of the sleeping-suit 
tore out: Hans stepped back unconcern- 
edly, to pluck a banana from a bunch hang- 
ing close to one of the boats. 

“Too much Ego,” said he, peeling the 
fruit and offering it to the caged devil, who 
was rending the silk to tatters. 

Then we laid out our bedding in the bows, 
among the sleeping Lascars, to catch any 
breeze that the pace of the ship might give 
us. The sea was like smoky oil, except 
where it turned to fire under our forefoot 
and whirled back into the dark in smears 
of dull flame. There was a thunder-storm 
some miles away: we could see the glim- 
mer of the lightning. The ship’s cow, dis- 
tressed by the heat and the smell of the 
ape-beast in the cage, lowed unhappily 
from time to time in exactly the same key 
as the lookout man at the bows answered 
the hourly call from the bridge. The 
trampling tune of the engines was very dis- 
tinct, and the jarring of the ash-lift, as it 
was tipped into the sea, hurt the procession 
of hushed noise. Hans lay down by my 
side and lighted a good-night cigar. This 
was naturally the beginning of conversa- 
tion. He owned a voice as soothing as the 
wash of the sea, and stores of experiences 
as vast as the sea itself ; for his business in 
life was to wander up and down the world, 
collecting orchids and wild beasts and eth- 


Bimi 


23 

nological specimens for German and 
American dealers. I watched the glowing 
end of his cigar wax and wane in the 
gloom, as the sentences rose and fell, till 
I was nearly asleep. The orang-outang, 
troubled by some dream of the forests of, 
his freedom, began to yell like a soul in 
purgatory, and to wrench madly at the bars 
of the cage. 

“ If he was out now dere would not be 
much of us left, hereabouts,” said Hans 
lazily. “ He screams good. See, now, 
how I shall tame him when he stops 
himself.” 

There was a pause in the outcry, and 
from Hans’ mouth came an imitation of a 
snake’s hiss, so perfect that I almost sprung 
to my feet. The sustained murderous 
sound ran along the deck, and the wrench- 
ing at the bars ceased. The orang-outang 
was quaking in an ecstasy of pure terror. 

“ Dot stop him,” said Hans. “ I learned 
dot trick in Mogoung Tanjong when I was 
collecting liddle monkeys for some peoples 
in Berlin. Efery one in der world is afraid 
of der monkeys — except der snake. So I 
blay snake against monkey, and he keep 
quite still. Dere was too much Ego in his 
Cosmos. Dot is der soul-custom of mon- 
keys. Are you asleep, or will you listen, 
and I will tell a dale dot vou shall not 
pelief ? ” 


24 , Mine Own People 

“ There’s no tale in the wide world that 
I can’t believe,” I said. 

“ If you have learned pelief you haf 
learned somedings. Now I shall try your 
pelief. Good! When I was collecting 
dose liddle monkeys — it was in ’79 or ’80, 
und I was in der islands of der Archipelago 
— over dere in der dark ” — he pointed 
southward to New Guinea generally — 
“ Mein Gott! I would sooner collect life 
red devils than liddle monkeys. When dey 
do not bite off your thumbs dey are always 
dying from nostalgia — home-sick — for 
dey haf der imperfect soul, which is mid- 
way arrested in defelopment — und too 
much Ego. I was dere for nearly a year, 
und dere I found a man dot was called 
Bertran, He was a Frenchman, und he 
was a goot man — naturalist to the bone. 
Dey said he was an escaped convict, but 
he was a naturalist, und dot was enough 
for me. He would call all her life beasts 
from der forest, und dey would come. I 
said he was St. Francis of Assisi in a new 
dransmigration produced, und he laughed 
und said he haf never preach to der fishes. 
He sold them for tripang — beche-de-mer. 

“ Und dot man, who was king of beasts- 
tamer men, he had in der house shush such 
anoder as dot devil-animal in der cage — 
a great orang-outang dot thought he was 
a man. He haf found him when he was 


Bimi 


25 

a child — der orang-outang — und he was 
child and brother and opera comique all 
round to Bertran. He had his room in dot 
house — not a cage, but a room — mit a 
bed and sheets, and he would go to bed and 
get up in der morning and smoke his cigar 
und eat his dinner mit Bertran, und walk 
mit him hand-in-hand, which was most hor- 
rible. Herr Gott! I haf seen dot beast 
throw himself back in his chair and laugh 
when Bertran haf made fun of me. He 
was not a beast; he was a man, and he 
talked to Bertran, und Bertran compre- 
hended, for I have seen dem. Und he was 
always politeful to me except when I talk 
too long to Bertran und say noddings at all 
to him. Den he would pull me away — 
dis great, dark devil, mit his enormous 
paws — shush as if I was a child. He was 
- not a beast, he was a man. Dis I saw 
: pefore I know him three months, und Ber- 
tran he haf saw the same; and Bimi, der 
orang-outang, haf understood us both, mit 
his cigar between his big-dog teeth und der 
blue gum. 

“ I was dere a year, dere und at der oder 
islands — somedimes for monkeys and 
somedimes for butterflies und orchits. 
One time Bertran say to me dot he will be 
married, because he haf found a girl dot 
was goot, and he inquire if this marrying 
idea was right. I would not say, pecause it 


26 Mine Own People 

was not me dot was going to be married. 
Den he go off courting der girl — she was 
a half-caste French girl — very pretty. 
Haf you got a new light for my cigar? 
Oof! Very pretty. Only I say: ‘ Haf 
you thought of Bimi? If he pulls me away 
when I talk to you, what will he do to your 
wife? He will pull her in pieces. If I was 
you, Bertran, I would gif my wife for wed- 
ding present der stuff figure of Bimi.’ By 
dot time I had learned somedings about der 
monkey peoples. ‘Shoot him?’ says Ber- 
tran. ‘ He is your beast,’ I said; ‘ if he was 
mine he would be shot now.’ 

“ Den I felt at der back of my neck der 
fingers of Bimi. Mein Gott! I tell you 
dot he talked through dose fingers. It was 
der deaf-and-dumb alphabet all gomplete. 
He slide his hairy arm round my neck, and 
he tilt up my chin und look into my face, 
shust to see if I understood his talk so well 
as he understood mine. 

“‘See now derel’ says Bertran, ‘und 
you would shoot him while he is cuddling 
you? Dot is der Teuton ingrate!’ 

“ But I knew dot I had made Bimi a life’s 
enemy, pecause his fingers haf talk murder 
through the back of my neck. Next dime 
I see Bimi dere was a pistol in my belt, und 
he touch it once, and I open der breech to 
show him it was loaded. He haf seen der 


Bimi 


27 

liddle monkeys killed in der woods, and he 
understood. 

“ So Bertran he was married, and he for- 
got clean about Bimi dot was skippin’ 
alone on der beach mit der half of a human 
soul in his belly. I was see him skip, und 
he took a big bough und thrash der sand 
till he haf made a great hole like a grave. 
So I says to Bertran: ‘For any sakes, kill 
Bimi. He is mad mit der jealousy.’ 

“Bertran haf said: ‘He is not mad at 
all. He haf obey and love my wife, und 
if she speaks he will get her slippers,’ und 
he looked at his wife across der room. She 
was a very pretty girl. 

“ Den I said to him: ‘ Dost thou pretend 
to know monkeys und dis beast dot is lash- 
ing himself mad upon der sands, pecause 
you do not talk to him? Shoot him when 
he comes to der house, for he haf der light 
in his eyes dot means killing — und kill- 
ing.’ Bimi come to der house, but dere 
was no light in his eyes. It was all put 
away, cunning — so cunning — und he 
fetch der girl her slippers, and Bertran turn 
to me und say: ‘Dost thou know him in 
nine months more dan I haf known him in 
twelve years? Shall a child stab his fader? 

I have fed him, und he was my child. Do 
not speak this nonsense to my wife or to 
me any more.’ 

“ Dot next day Bertran came to my 


28 


Mine Own People 

house to help me make some wood cases 
for der specimens, und he tell me dot he 
haf left his wife a liddle while mit Bimi in 
der garden. Den I finish my cases quick, 
und I say: ‘Let us go to your house und 
get a trink.’ He laugh und say: ‘Come 
along, dry mans.’ 

“ His wife was not in der garden, und 
Bimi did not come when Bertran called. 
Und his wife did not come when he called, 
und he knocked at her bedroom door und 
dot was shut tight — locked. Den he look 
at me, und his face was white. I broke 
down der door mit my shoulder, und der 
thatch of der roof was torn into a great 
hole, und der sun came in upon der floor. 
Haf you ever seen paper in der waste- 
basket, or cards at whist on der table scat- 
tered? Dere was no wife dot could be 
seen. I tell you dere was noddings in dot 
room dot might be a woman. Dere was 
stuff on der floor, und dot was all. I 
looked at dese things und I was very sick; 
but Bertran looked a liddle longer at what 
was upon the floor und der walls, und der 
hole in der thatch. Den he pegan to laugh, 
soft and low, und I knew und thank Gott 
dot he was mad. He nefer cried, he nefer 
prayed. He stood still in der doorway und 
laugh to himself. Den he said: ‘She haf 
locked herself in dis room, and he haf torn 
up der thatch. Fi done. Dot is so. We 


Bimi 


29 

will mend der thatch und wait for Bimi. 
He will surely come.’ 

“ I tell you we waited ten days in dot 
house, after der room was made into a 
room again, and once or twice we saw Bimi 
cornin’ a liddle way from der woods. He 
was afraid pecause he haf done wrong. 
Bertran called him when he was come to 
look on the tenth day, und Bimi come skip- 
ping along der beach und making noises, 
mit a long piece of black hair in his hands. 
Den Bertran laugh and say, ‘ Fi done! ’ 
shust as if it was a glass broken upon der 
table; und Bimi come nearer, und Bertran 
was honey-sweet in his voice and laughed 
to himselh For three days he made love 
to Bimi, pecause Bimi would not let him- 
self be touched. Den Bimi come to dinner 
at der same table mit us, und der hair on 
his hands was all black und thick mit — 
mit what had dried on his hands. Bertran 
gave him sangaree till Bimi was drunk and 
stupid, und den 

Hans paused to puff at his cigar. 

“And then?” said I. 

“Und den Bertran kill him with his 
hands, und I go for a walk upon der beach. 
It was Bertran’s own piziness. When I 
come back der ape he was dead, und Ber- 
tran he was dying abofe him; but still he 
laughed a liddle und low, and he was quite 
content. Now you know der formula of 


30 Mine Own People 

der strength of der orang-outang — it is 
more as seven to one in relation to man. 
But Bertran, he haf killed Bimi mit sooch 
dings as Gott gif him. Dot was der 
mericle.” 

The infernal clamor in the cage recom- 
menced. “Aha! Dot friend of ours haf 
still too much Ego in his Cosmos. Be 
quiet, thou!” 

Hans hissed long and venomously. We 
could hear the great beast quaking in his 
cage. 

“ But why in the world didn’t you help 
Bertran instead of letting him be killed?” 
I asked. 

“ My friend,” said Hans, composedly 
stretching himself to slumber, “ it was not 
nice even to mineself dot I should lif after 
I had seen dot room wit der hole in der 
thatch. Und Bertran, he was her husband, 
Goot-night, und sleep well.” 


NAMGAY DOOLA 


Once upon a time there was a king who 
lived on the road to Thibet, very many 
miles in the Himalaya Mountains. His 
kingdom was ii,ooo feet above the sea, and 
exactly four miles square, but most of the 
miles stood on end, owing to the nature of 
the country. His revenues were rather less 
than £400 yearly, and they were expended 
on the maintenance of one elephant and a 
standing army of five men. He was trib- 
utary to the Indian government, who 
allowed him certain sums for keeping a sec- 
tion of the Himalaya-Thibet road in repair. 
He further increased his revenues by sell- 
ing timber to the railway companies, for 
he would cut the great deodar trees in his 
own forest and they fell thundering into 
the Sutlej River and were swept down to 
the Plains, 300 miles away, and became 
railway ties. Now and again this king, 
whose name does not matter, would mount 
a ring-streaked horse and ride scores of 
miles to Simlatown to confer with the lieu- 


31 


32 Mine Own People 

tenant-governor on matters of state, or 
assure the viceroy that his sword was at the 
service of the queen-empress. Then the 
viceroy would cause a ruffle of drums to be 
sounded and the ring-streaked horse and 
the cavalry of the state — two men in tat- 
ters — and the herald who bore the Silver 
Stick before the king would trot back to 
their own place, which was between the 
tail of a heaven-climbing glacier and a dark 
birch forest. 

Now, from such a king, always remem- 
bering that he possessed one veritable ele- 
phant and could count his descent for i ,200 
years, I expected, when it was my fate to 
wander through his dominions, no more 
than mere license to live. 

The night had closed in rain, and rolling 
clouds blotted out the lights of the villages 
in the valley. Forty miles away, un- 
touched by cloud or storm, the white shoul- 
der of Dongo Pa — the Mountain of the 
Council of the Gods — upheld the evening 
star. The monkeys sung sorrowfully to 
each other as they hunted for dry roots in 
the fern-draped trees, and the last puff of 
the day-wind brought from the unseen vil- 
lages the scent of damp wood smoke, hot 
cakes, dripping undergrowth, and rotting 
pine-cones. That smell is the true smell of 
the Himalayas, and if it once gets into the 
blood of a man he will, at the last, forget- 


Namgay Doola 33 

ting everything else, return to the Hills 
to die. The clouds closed and the smell 
went away, and there remained nothing in 
all the world except chilling white mists 
and the boom of the Sutlej River. 

A fat-tailed sheep, who did not want to 
die, bleated lamentably at my tent-door. 
He was scuffling with the prime minister 
and the director-general of public educa- 
tion, and he was a royal gift to me and my 
camp servants. I expressed my thanks 
suitably and inquired if I might have audi- 
ence of the king. The prime minister re- 
adjusted his turban — it had fallen off in 
the struggle — and assured me that the 
king would be very pleased to see me. 
Therefore I dispatched two bottles as a 
foretaste, and when the sheep had entered 
upon another incarnation, climbed up to 
the king’s palace through the wet. He had 
sent his army to escort me, but it stayed 
to talk with my cook. Soldiers are very 
much alike all the world over. 

The palace was a four-roomed, white- 
washed mud-and-timber house, the finest 
in all the Hills for a day’s journey. The 
king was dressed in a purple velvet jacket, 
white muslin trousers, and a saffron-yellow 
turban of price. He gave me audience in 
a little carpeted room opening off the pal- 
ace court-yard, which was occupied by the 
elephant of state. The great beast was 


34 Mine Own People 

sheeted and anchored from trunk to tail, 
and the curve of his back stood out against 
the sky line. 

The prime minister and the director-gen- 
eral of public instruction were present to 
introduce me; but all the court had been 
dismissed lest the two bottles aforesaid 
should corrupt their morals. The king 
cast a wreath of heavy, scented flowers 
round my neck as I bowed, and inquired 
how my honored presence had the felicity 
to be. I said that through seeing his au- 
spicious countenance the mists of the night 
had turned into sunshine, and that by rea- 
son of his beneficent sheep his good deeds 
would be remembered by the gods. He 
said that since I had set my magnificent 
foot in his kingdom the crops would prob- 
ably yield seventy per cent, more than the 
average. I said that the fame of the king 
had reached to the four corners of the 
earth, and that the nations gnashed their 
teeth when they heard daily of the glory 
of his realm and the wisdom of his moon- 
like prime minister and lotus-eyed director- 
general of public education. 

Then we sat down on clean white cush- 
ions, and I was at the king’s right hand. 
Three minutes later fie was telling me tfiat 
the condition of the maize crop was some- 
thing disgraceful, and that the railway 
companies \vould not pay him enough for 


Namgay Doola 35 

his timber. The talk shifted to and fro 
with the bottles. We discussed very many 
quaint things, and the king became confi- 
dential on the subject of government gen- 
erally. Most of all he dwelt on the short- 
comings of one of his subjects, who, from 
what I could gather, had been paralyzing 
the executive. 

“ In the old days,” said the king, “ I 
could have ordered the elephant yonder to 
trample him to death. Now I must e’en 
send him seventy miles across the hills to 
be tried, and his keep for that time would 
be upon the state. And the elephant eats 
everything.” 

" What be the man’s crimes. Rajah 
Sahib?” said I. 

“ Firstly, he is an ‘ outlander,’ and no 
man of mine own people. Secondly, since 
of my favor I gave him land upon his com- 
ing, he refuses to pay revenue. Am I not 
the lord of the earth, above and below — 
entitled by right and custom to one-eighth 
of the crop? Yet this devil, establishing 
himself, refuses to pay a single tax . . . 

and he brings a poisonous spawn of 
babies.” 

“ Cast him into jail,” I said. 

" Sahib,” the king answered, shifting a 
little on the cushions, “ once and only once 
in these forty years sickness came upon 
me so that I was not able to go abroad. 


36 Mine Own People 

In that hour I made a vow to my God that I 
would never again cut man or woman from 
the light of the sun and the air of God, for 
I perceived the nature of the punishment. 
How can I break my vow? Were it only 
the lopping ofif of a hand or a foot, I should 
not delay. But even that is impossible now 
that the English have rule. One or an- 
other of my people ” — he looked obliquely 
at the director-general of public education 
— “ would at once write a letter to the vice- 
roy, and perhaps I should be deprived of 
that ruffle of drums.” 

He unscrewed the mouthpiece of his sil- 
ver water-pipe, fitted a plain amber one, 
and passed the pipe to me. “ Not content 
with refusing revenue,” Jie continued, 
“ this outlander refuses also to beegar ” 
(this is the corvee or forced labor on the 
roads), “ and stirs my people up to the like 
treason. Yet he is, if so he wills, an expert 
log-snatcher. There is none better or 
bolder among my people to clear a block 
of the river when the logs stick fast.” 

“ But he worships strange gods,” said 
the prime minister, deferentially. 

“ For that I have no concern,” said the 
king, who was as tolerant as Akbar in mat- 
ters of belief. “ To each man his own god, 
and the fire or Mother Earth for us all at 
the last. It is the rebellion that offends 


me. 


Namgay Doola 37 

“ The king has an army,” I suggested. 
“ Has not the king burned the man’s house, 
and left him naked to the night dews?” 

“ Nay. A hut is a hut, and it holds the 
life of a man. But once I sent my army 
against him when his excuses became 
wearisome. Of their heads he brake three 
across the top with a stick. The other 
two men ran away. Also the guns would 
not shoot.” 

I had seen the equipment of the infantry. 
One-third of it was an old muzzle-loading 
fowling-piece with ragged rust holes where 
the nipples should have been; one-third a 
wire-bound matchlock with a worm-eaten 
stock, and one-third a four-bore flint duck 
gun, without a flint. ^ 

“ But it is to be remembered,” said the 
king, reaching out for the bottle, “ that he 
is a very expert log-snatcher and a man of 
a merry face. What shall I do to him, 
sahib? ” 

This was interesting. The timid hill- 
folk would as soon have refused taxes to 
their king as offerings to their gods. The 
rebel must be a man of character. 

“ If it be the king’s permission,” I said, 

“ I will not strike my tents till the third 
day, and I will see this man. The mercy 
of the king is godlike, and rebellion is like 
unto the sin of witchcraft. Moreover, both 
the bottles, and another, be empty.” 


38 Mine Own People 

“ You have my leave to go,” said the 
king. 

N ext morning the crier went through the 
state proclaiming that there was a log-jam 
on the river and that it behooved all loyal 
subjects to clear it. The people poured 
down from their villages to the moist, 
warm valley of poppy fields, and the king 
and I went with them. 

Hundreds of dressed deodar logs had 
caught on a snag of rock, and the river 
was bringing down more logs every min- 
ute to complete the blockade. The water 
snarled and wrenched and worried at the 
timber, while the population of the state 
prodded at the nearest logs with poles, in 
the hope of easing the pressure. Then 
there went up a shout of “ Namgay Doola! 
Namgay Doola! ” and a large, red-haired 
villager hurried up, stripping off his clothes 
as he ran. 

“That is he. That is the rebel!” said 
the king. “ Now will the dam be cleared.” 

“ But why has he red hair? ” I asked, 
since red hair among hill-folk is as uncom- 
mon as blue or green. 

“He is an outlander,” said the king. 
“Well done! Oh, well done!” 

Namgay Doola had scrambled on the 
jam and was clawing out the butt of a log 
with a rude sort of a boat-hook. It slid 
forward slowly, as an alligator moves, and 


Namgay Doola 39 

three or four others followed it. The green 
water spouted through the gaps. Then the 
villagers howled and shouted and leaped 
among the logs, pulling and pushing the 
obstinate timber, and the red head of Nam- 
gay Doola was chief among them all. The 
logs swayed and chafed and groaned as 
fresh consignments from up-stream bat- 
tered the now weakening dam. It gave 
way at last in a smother of foam, racing 
butts, bobbing black heads, and a confusion 
indescribable, as the river tossed every- 
thing before it. I saw the red head go 
down with the last remnants of the jam 
and disappear between the great grinding 
tree trunks. It rose close to the bank, and 
blowing like a grampus, Namgay Doola 
wiped the water out of his eyes and made 
obeisance to the king. 

I had time to observe the man closely. 
The virulent redness of his shock head and 
beard was most startling, and in the thicket 
of hair twinkled above high cheek-bones 
two very merry blue eyes. He was indeed 
an outlander, but yet a Thibetan in langu- 
age, habit and attire. He spoke the Lepcha 
dialect with an indescribable softening of 
the gutturals. It was not so much a lisp 
as an accent. 

“Whence comest thou?” I asked, 
wondering. 

“ From Thibet.” He pointed across the 


40 Mine Own People 

hills and grinned. That grin went straight 
to my heart. Mechanically I held out my 
hand, and Namgay Doola took it. No 
pure Thibetan would have understood the 
meaning of the gesture. He went away 
to look for his clothes, and as he climbed 
back to his village, I heard a joyous yell 
that seemed unaccountably familiar. It 
was the whooping of Namgay Doola. 

“ Y ou see now,” said the king, “ why I 
would not kill him. He is a bold man 
among my logs, but,” and he shook his 
head like a schoolmaster, “ I know that 
before long there will be complaints of him 
in the court. Let us return to the palace 
and do justice.” 

It was that king’s custom to judge his 
subjects every day between eleven and 
three o’clock. I heard him do justice equi- 
tably on weighty matters of trespass, slan- 
der, and a little wife-stealing. Then his 
brow clouded and he summoned me. 

“ Again it is Namgay Doola,” he said, 
despairingly. “ Not content with refusing 
revenue on his own part, he has bound half 
his village by an oath to the like treason. 
Never before has such a thing befallen me! 
Nor are my taxes heavy.” 

A rabbit-faced villager, with a blush-rose 
stuck behind his ear, advanced trembling. 
He had been in Namgay Doola’s con- 


Namgay Doola 41 

spiracy, but had told everything and hoped 
for the king’s favor. 

“ Oh, king! ” said I, “ if it be the king’s 
will, let this matter stand over till the morn- 
ing. Only the gods can do right in a 
hurry, and it may be that yonder villager 
has lied.” 

“ Nay, for I know the nature of Namgay 
Doola; but since a guest asks, let the mat- 
ter remain. Wilt thou, for my sake, speak 
harshly to this red-headed outlander? He 
may listen to thee.” 

I made an attempt that very evening, but 
for the life of me I could not keep my 
countenance. Namgay Doola grinned so 
persuasively and began to tell me about a 
big brown bear in a poppy field by the 
river. Would I care to shoot that bear? 
I spoke austerely on the sin of detected 
conspiracy and the certainty of punish- 
ment. Namgay Doola’s face clouded for a 
moment. Shortly afterward he withdrew 
from my tent, and I heard him singing 
softly among the pines. The words were 
unintelligible to me, but the tune, like his 
liquid, insinuating speech, seemed the 
ghost of something strangely familiar. 

“ Dir hane mard-i-yemen dir 
To weeree ala gee.” 

crooned Namgay Doola again and again, 
and I racked my brain for that lost tune. 


42 Mine Own People 

It was not till after dinner that I discovered 
some one had cut a square foot of velvet 
from the center of my best camera cloth. 
This made me so angry that I wandered 
down the valley in the hope of meeting the 
big brown bear. I could hear him grunt- 
ing like a discontented pig in the poppy 
field as I waited shoulder deep in the dew- 
dripping Indian corn to catch him after his 
meal. The moon was at full and drew out 
the scent of the tasseled crop. Then I 
heard the anguished bellow of a Himalayan 
cow — one of the little black crummies no 
bigger than Newfoundland dogs. Two 
shadows that looked like a bear and her 
cub hurried past me. I was in the act of 
firing when I saw that each bore a brilliant 
red head. The lesser animal was trailing 
something rope-like that left a dark track 
I on the path. They were within six feet 
' of me, and the shadow of the moonlight lay 
velvet-black on their faces. Velvet-black 
was exactly the word, for by all the powers 
of moonlight they were masked in the vel- 
vet of my camera-cloth. I marveled, and 
went to bed. 

Next morning the kingdom was in an 
uproar. Namgay Doola, men said, had 
gone forth in the night and with a sharp 
knife had cut off the tail of a cow belong- 
ing to the rabbit-faced villager who had 
betrayed him. It was sacrilege unspeak- 


Namgay Doola 43 

able ag-ainst the holy cow! The state 
desired his blood, but he had retreated into 
his hut, barricaded the doors and windows 
with big stones, and defied the world. 

The king and I and the populace ap- 
proached the hut cautiously. There was 
no hope of capturing our man without loss 
of life, for from a hole in the wall projected 
the muzzle of an extremely well-cared-for 
gun — the only gun in the state that could 
shoot. Namgay Doola had narrowly 
missed a villager just before we came up. 

The standing army stood. 

It could do no more, for when it ad- 
vanced pieces of sharp shale flew from the 
windows. To these were added from time 
to time showers of scalding water. We 
saw red heads bobbing up and down 
within. The family of Namgay Doola 
were aiding their sire. Blood-curdling 
yells of defiance were the only answer to 
our prayers. 

“Never,” said the king, puffing, “has 
such a thing befallen my state. Next year 
I will certainly buy a little cannon.” He 
looked at me imploringly. 

“ Is there any priest in the kingdom to 
whom he will listen?” said I, for a light 
was beginning to break upon me. 

“ He worships his own god,” said the 
prime minister. “We can but starve him 
out” 


44 Mine Own People 

“ Let the white man approach,” said 
Namgay Doola from within. “ All others 
I will kill. Send me the white man.” 

The door was thrown open and I entered 
the smoky interior of a Thibetan hut cram- 
med with children. And every child had 
flaming red hair. A fresh-gathered cow’s 
tail lay on the floor, and by its side two 
pieces of black velvet — my black velvet — 
rudely hacked into the semblance of masks. 

“ And what is this shame, Namgay 
Doola?” I asked. 

He grinned more charmingly than ever. 

There is no shame,” said he. “ I did but 
cut off the tail of that man’s cow. He be- 
trayed me. I was minded to shoot him, 
sahib, but not to death. Indeed, not to 
death; only in the legs.” 

“ And why at all, since it is the custom 
to pay revenue to the king? Why at all? ” 

“ By the god of my father, I can not tell,” 
said Namgay Doola. 

“ And who was thy father? ” v 

“ The same that had this gun.” He 
showed me his weapon, a Tower musket, 
bearing date 1832 and the stamp of the 
Honorable East India Company. 

“And thy father’s name?” said I. 

“ Timlay Doola,” said he. “ At the first, 

I being then a little child, it is in my mind 
that he wore a red coat” 


Namgay Doola 45 

“Of that I have no doubt; but repeat 
the name of thy father twice or thrice.” 

He obeyed, and I understood whence the 
puzzling accent in his speech came. 
“Thimla Dhula! ” said he excitedly. “To 
this hour. I worship his god.” 

“ May I see that god? ” 

“ In a little while — at twilight time.” 

“ Rememberest thou aught of thy father’s 
speech? ” 

“ It is long ago. But there was one 
word which he said often. Thus, ‘ ’Shun! ’ 
Then I and my brethren stood upon our 
feet, our hands to our sides, thus.” 

“ Even so. And what was thy mother? ” 

“A woman of the Hills. We be Lep- 
chas of Darjiling, but me they call an out- 
iander because my hair is as thou seest.” 

The Thibetan woman, his wife, touched 
him on the arm gently. The long parley 
outside the fort had lasted far into the day. 
It was now close upon twilight — the hour 
of the Angelus. Very solemnly the red- 
headed brats rose from the floor and 
formed a semicircle. Namgay Doola laid 
his gun aside, lighted a little oil-lamp, and 
set it before a recess in the wall. Pulling 
back a whisp of dirty cloth, he revealed a 
worn brass crucifix leaning against the hel- 
met badge of a long-forgotten East India 
Company’s regiment. “ Thus did my 
father,” he said, crossing himself clumsily. 


46 Mine Own People 

The wife and children followed suit. Then, 
all together, they struck up the wailing 
chant that I heard on the hill-side; 

“ Dir hane mard-i-yemen dir 
To weeree ala gee.” 

I was puzzled no longer. Again and 
again they sung, as if their hearts would 
break, their version of the chorus of “ The 
Wearing of the Green”: 

“ They’re hanging men and women, too. 

For the wearing of the green.” 

I A diabolical inspiration came to me. 
One of the brats, a boy about eight years 
old — could he have been in the fields last 
night? — was watching me as he sung. I 
pulled out a rupee, held the coin between 
finger and thumb, and looked — only 
looked — at the gun leaning against the 
wall. A grin of brilliant and perfect com- 
prehension overspread his porringer-like 
face. Never for an instant stopping the 
song, he held out his hand for the money, 
and then slid the gun to my hand. I might 
have shot Namgay' Doola dead as he 
chanted, but I was satisfied. The inevi- 
table blood-instinct held true. Namgay 
Doola drew the curtain across the recess. 
Angelus was over. 

“ Thus my father sung. There was 
much more, but I have forgotten, and I do 
not know the purport of even these words. 


Namgay Doola 47 

but it may be that the god will understand. 
I am not of this people, and I will not pay 
revenue.” 

“ And why? ” 

Again that soul-compelling grin. “ What 
occupation would be to me between crop 
and crop? It is better than scaring bears. 
But these people do not understand.” 

He picked the masks off the floor and 
looked in my face as simply as a child. 

“ By what road didst thou attain knowl- 
edge to make those deviltries?” I said, 
pointing. 

“ I can not tell. I am but a Lepcha of 
Darjiling, and yet the stuff ” 

“Which thou hast stolen,” said I. 

“Nay, surely. Did I steal? I desired 
it so. The stuff — the stuff. What else 
should I have done with the stuff?” He 
twisted the velvet between his fingers. 

“ But the sin of maiming the cow — con- 
sider that.” 

“Oh, sahib, the man betrayed me; the 
heifer’s tail waved in the moonlight, and I 
had my knife. What else should I have 
done? The tail came off ere I was aware. 
Sahib, thou knowest more than I.” 

“ That is true,” said I. “ Stay within 
the door. I go to speak to the king.” 
The population of the state were ranged on 
the hill-side. I went forth and spoke. 

“ Oh, king,” said I, “ touching this man, 


48 Mine Own People 

there be two courses open to thy wisdom. 
Thou canst either hang him from a tree — 
he and his brood — till there remains no 
hair that is red within thy land.” 

“ Nay,” said the king. “ Why should I 
hurt the little children?” 

They had poured out of the hut and 
were making plump obeisances to every- 
body. Namgay Doola waited at the door 
with his gun across his arm. 

“ Or thou canst, discarding their impiety 
of the cow-maiming, raise him to honor in 
thy army. He comes of a race that will 
not pay revenue. A red flame is in his 
blood which comes out at the top of his 
head in that glowing hair. Make him chief 
of thy army. Give him honor as may be- 
fall and full allowance of work, but look 
to it, oh, king, that neither he nor his hold 
a foot of earth from thee henceforward. 
Feed him with words and favor, and also 
liquor from certain bottles that thou know- 
est of, and he will be a bulwark of defense. 
But deny him even a tuftlet of grass for 
his own. This is the nature that God has 
given him. Moreover, he has breth- 


The state groaned unanimously. 

“ But if his brethren come they will 
surely fight with each other till they die; 
or else the one will always give information 


Namgay Doola 49 

concerning the other. Shall he be of thy 
army, oh, king? Choose.” 

The king bowed his head, and I said: 
“ Come forth, Namgay Doola, and com- 
mand the king’s army. Thy name shall no 
more be Namgay in the mouths of men, 
but Patsay Doola, for, as thou hast truly 
said, I know.” 

Then Namgay Doola, new-christened 
Patsay Doola, son of Timlay Doola — 
which is Tim Doolan — clasped the king’s 
feet, cuffed the standing army, and hurried 
in an agony of contrition from temple to 
temple making offerings for the sin of the 
cattle-maiming. 

And the king was so pleased with my 
perspicacity that he offered to sell me a 
village for £20 sterling. But I buy no 
village in the Himalayas so long as one 
red head flares between the tail of the 
heaven-climbing glacier and the dark birch 
forest. 

I know that breed. 


THE RECRUDESCENCE 
OF IMRAY 


Imray had achieved the impossible. 
Without warning, for no conceivable mo- 
tive, in his youth and at the threshold of 
his career he had chosen to disappear from 
the world — which is to say, the little In- 
dian station where he lived. Upon a day 
he was alive, well, happy, and in great evi- 
dence at his club, among the billiard-tables. 
Upon a morning he was not, and no man- 
ner of search could make sure where he 
might be. He had stepped out of his 
place; he had not appeared at his office at 
the proper time, and his dog-cart was not 
upon the public roads. For these reasons 
and because he was hampering in a micro- 
scopical degree the administration of the 
Indian Empire, the Indian Empire paused 
for one microscopical moment to make in- 
quiry into the fate of Imray. Ponds were 
dragged, wells were plumbed, telegrams 
were dispatched down the lines of railways 


50 


The Recrudescence of Imray 5 1 

and to the nearest seaport town — 1200 
miles away — but Imray was not at the 
end of the drag-ropes nor the telegrams. 
He was gone, and his place knew him no 
more. Then the work of the great Indian 
Empire swept forward, because it could not 
be delayed, and Imray, from being a man, 
became a mystery — such a thing as men 
talk over at their tables in the club for a 
month and then forget utterly. His guns, 
horses, and carts were sold to the highest 
bidder. His superior officer wrote an ab- 
surd letter to his mother, saying that Imray 
had unaccountably disappeared and his 
bungalow stood empty on the road. 

After three or four months of the scorch- 
ing hot weather had gone by, my friend 
Strickland, of the police force, saw fit to 
rent the bungalow from the native landlord. 
This was before he was engaged to Miss 
Youghai — an affair which has been de- 
scribed in another place — and while he 
was pursuing his investigations into native 
life. His own life was sufficiently peculiar, 
and men complained of his manners and 
customs. There was always food in his 
house, but there were no regular times for 
meals. He eat, standing up and walking 
about, whatever he might find on the side- 
board, and this is not good for the insides 
of human beings. His domestic equip- 
ment was limited to six rifles, three shot- 


52 Mine Own People 

guns, five saddles, and a collection of stiff- 
jointed masheer rods, bigger and stronger 
than the largest salmon rods. These things 
occupied one-half of his bungalow, and the 
other half was given up to Strickland and 
his dog Tietjens — an enormous Rampur 
slut, who sung when she was ordered, and 
devoured daily the rations of two men. 
She spoke to Strickland in a language of 
her own, and whenever in her walks abroad 
she saw things calculated to destroy the 
peace of Her Majesty the Queen Empress, 
she returned to her master and gave him 
information. Strickland would take step* 
at once, and the end of his labors was trou- 
ble and fine and imprisonment for other 
people. The natives believed that Tietjens 
was a familiar spirit, and treated her with 
the great reverence that is born of hate and 
fear. One room in the bungalow was set 
apart for her special use. She owned a 
bedstead, a blanket, and a drinking-trough, 
and if any one came into Strickland’s room 
at night, her custom was to knock down 
the invader and give tongue till some one 
came with a light. Strickland owes his 
life to her. When he was on the frontier 
in search of the local murderer who came 
in the gray dawn to send Strickland much 
further than the Andaman Islands, Tiet- 
jens caught him as he was crawling into 
Strickland’s tent with a dagger between his 


rhe Recrudescence of Imray 53 

teeth, and after his record of iniquity was 
established in the eyes of the law, he was 
hanged. From that date Tietjens wore a 
collar of rough silver and employed a mon- 
ogram on her night blanket, and the 
blanket was double-woven Kashmir cloth, 
for she was a delicate dog. 

Under no circumstances would she be 
separated from Strickland, and when he 
was ill with fever she made great trouble 
for the doctors because she did not know 
how to help her master and would not 
allow another creature to attempt aid. 
Macarnaght, of the Indian Medical Service, 
beat her over the head with a gun, before 
she could understand that she must give 
room for those who could give quinine. 

A short time after Strickland had taken 
Imray’s bungalow, my business took me 
through that station, and naturally, the 
club quarters being full, I quartered myself 
upon Strickland. It was a desirable bun- 
galow, eight-roomed, and heavily thatched 
against any chance of leakage from rain. 
Under the pitch of the roof ran a ceiling 
cloth, which looked just as nice as a white- 
washed ceiling. The landlord had re- 
painted it when Strickland took the 
bungalow, and unless you knew how In- 
dian bungalows were built you would never 
have suspected that above the cloth lay the 
dark, three-cornered cavern of the roof, 


54 Mine Own People 

where the beams and the under side of the 
thatch harbored all manner of rats, bats, 
ants, and other things. 

Tietjens met me in the veranda with a 
bay like the boom of the bells of St. Paul’s, 
and put her paws on my shoulders and 
said she was glad to see me. Strickland 
had contrived to put together that sort of 
meal which he called lunch, and immedi- 
ately after it was finished went out about 
his business. I was left alone with Tiet- 
jens and my own affairs. The heat of the 
summer had broken up and given place 
to the warm damp of the rains. There was 
no motion in the heated air, but the rain 
fell like bayonet rods on the earth, and 
flung up a blue mist where it splashed back 
again. The bamboos and the custard ap- 
ples, the poinsettias and the mango-trees 
in the garden stood still while the warm 
water lashed through them, and the frogs 
began to sing among the aloe hedges. A 
little before the light failed, and when the 
rain was at its worst, I sat in the back ver- 
anda and heard the water roar from the 
eaves, and scratched myself because I was 
covered with the thing they call prickly 
heat. Tietjens came out with me and put 
her head in my lap, and was very sorrow- 
ful, so I gave her biscuits when tea was 
ready, and I took tea in the back veranda 
on account of the little coolness I found 


The Recrudescence of Imray 55 

there. The rooms of the house were dark 
behind me. I could smell Strickland’s sad- 
dlery and the oil on his guns, and I did 
not the least desire to sit among these 
things. My own servant came to me in 
the twilight, the muslin of his clothes cling- 
ing tightly to his drenched body, and told 
me that a gentleman had called and wished 
to see some one. Very much against my 
will, and because of the darkness of the 
rooms, I went into the naked drawing- 
room, telling my man to bring the lights. 
There might or might not have been a 
caller in the room — it seems to me that 
I saw a figure by one of the windows, but 
when the lights came there was nothing 
save the spikes of the rain without and 
the smell of the drinking earth in my nos- 
trils. I explained to my man that he was 
no wiser than he ought to be, and went 
back to the veranda to talk to Tietjens. 
She had gone out into the wet and I could 
hardly coax her back to me — even with 
biscuits with sugar on top. Strickland rode 
back, dripping wet, just before dinner, and 
the first thing he said was: 

“ Has any one called? ” 

I explained, with apologies, that my ser- 
vant had called me into the drawing-room 
on a false alarm; or that some loafer had 
tried to call on Strickland, and, thinking 
better of it, fled after giving his name. 


56 Mine Own People 

Strickland ordered dinner without com- 
ment and since it was a real dinner, with 
white table-cloth attached, we sat down. 

At nine o’clock Strickland wanted to go 
to bed, and I was tired too. Tietjens, who 
had been lying underneath the table, rose 
up and went into the least-exposed veranda 
as soon as her master moved to his own 
room, which was next to the stately cham- 
ber set apart for Tietjens. If a mere wife 
had wished to sleep out-of-doors in that 
pelting rain, it would not have mattered, 
but Tietjens was a dog, and therefore the 
better animal. I looked at Strickland, ex- 
pecting to see him flog her with a whip. 
He smiled queerly, as a man would smile 
after telling some hideous domestic trag- 
edy. “ She has done this ever since I 
moved in here.” 

The dog was Strickland’s dog, so I said 
nothing, but I felt all that Strickland felt 
in being made light of. Tietjens encamped 
outside my bedroom window, and storm 
after storm came up, thundered on the 
thatch, and died away. The lightning 
spattered the sky as a thrown egg spatters 
a barn door, but the light was pale blue, 
not yellow; and looking through my slit 
bamboo blinds, I could see the great dog 
standing, not sleeping, in the veranda, the 
hackles alift on her back, and her feet 
planted as tensely as the drawn wire rope 


The Recrudescence of Imray 57 

of a suspension bridge. In the very short 
pauses of the thunder I tried to sleep, but 
it seemed that some one wanted me very 
badly. He, whoever he was, was trying to 
call me by name, but his voice was no more 
than a husky whisper. Then the thunder 
ceased and Tietjens went into the garden 
and howled at the low moon. Somebody 
tried to open my door, and walked about 
and through the house, and stood breath- 
ing heavily in the verandas, and just when 
I was falling asleep I fancied that I heard 
a wild hammering and clamoring above my 
head or on the door. 

1 ran into Strickland’s room and asked 
him whether he was ill and had been call- 
ing for me. He was lying on the bed half- 
dressed, with a pipe in his mouth. “ I 
thought you’d come,” he said. “ Have I 
been walking around the house at all?” 

I explained that he had been in the din- 
ing-room and the smoking-room and two 
or three other places; and he laughed and 
told me to go back to bed. I went back 
to bed and slept till the morning, but in 
all my dreams I was sure I was doing some 
one an injustice in not attending to his 
wants. What those wants were I could 
not tell, but a fluttering, whispering, bolt- 
fumbling, luring, loitering some one was 
reproaching me for my slackness, and 
through all the dreams I heard the howling 


58 Mine Own People 

of Tietjens in the garden and the thrashing 
of the rain. 

I was in that house for two days, and 
Strickland went to his office daily, leaving 
me alone for eight or ten hours a day, with 
Tietjens for my only companion. As long 
as the full light lasted I was comfortable, 
and so was Tietjens; but in the twilight she 
and I moved into the back veranda and 
cuddled each other for company. We were 
alone in the house, but for all that it was 
fully occupied by a tenant with whom I 
had no desire to interfere. I never saw 
him, but I could see the curtains between 
the rooms quivering where he had just 
passed through; I could hear the chairs 
creaking as the bamboos sprung under a 
weight that had just quitted them; and I 
could feel when I went to get a book from 
the dining-room that somebody was wait- 
ing in the shadows of the front veranda till 
I should have gone away. Tietjens made 
the twilight more interesting by glaring 
into the darkened rooms, with every hair 
erect, and following the motions of some- 
thing that I could not see. She never en- 
tered the rooms, but her eyes moved, and 
that was quite sufficient. Only when my 
servant came to trim the lamps and make 
all light and habitable, she would come in 
with me and spend her time sitting on her 
haunches watching an invisible extra man 


The Recrudescence of Imray 59 

as he moved about behind my shoulder. 
Dogs are cheerful companions. 

I ex'plained to Strickland, gently as 
might be, that I would go over to the club 
and find for myself quarters there. I ad- 
mired his hospitality, was pleased with his 
guns and rods, but I did not much care 
for his house and its atmosphere. He 
heard me out to the end, and then smiled 
very wearily, but without contempt, for he 
is a man who understands things. “ Stay 
on,” he said, “ and see what this thing 
means. All you have talked about I have 
known since I took the bungalow. Stay 
on and wait. Tietjens has left me. Are 
you going too? ” 

I had seen him through one little affair 
connected with an idol that had brought 
me to the doors of a lunatic asylum, and 
I had no desire to help him through fur- 
ther experiences. He was a man to whom 
unpleasantnesses arrived as do dinners to 
ordinary people. 

Therefore I explained more clearly than 
ever that I liked him immensely, and would 
be happy to see him in the daytime, but 
that I didn’t care to sleep under his roof. 
This was after dinner, when Tietjens had 
gone out to lie in the veranda. 

“ Ton my soul, I don’t wonder,” said 
Strickland, with his eyes on the ceiling- 
cloth. ” Look at that! ” 


6o Mine Own People 

The tails of two snakes were hanging be- 
tween the cloth and the cornice of the wall. 
They threw long shadows in the larfip-light. 
“ If you are afraid of snakes, of course — ” 
said Strickland. “ I hate and fear snakes, 
because if you look into the eyes of any 
snake you will see that it knows all and 
more of man’s fall, and that it feels all the 
contempt that the devil felt when Adam 
was evicted from Eden. Besides which its 
bite is generally fatal, and it bursts up 
trouser legs.” 

“ You ought to get your thatch over- 
hauled,” I said. “ Give me a masheer rod, 
and we’ll poke ’em down.” 

“ They’ll hide among the roof beams,” 
said Strickland. “ I can’t stand snakes 
overhead. I’m going up. If I shake ’em 
down, stand by with a cleaning-rod and 
break their backs.” 

I was not anxious to assist Strickland 
in his work, but I took the loading-rod and 
waited in the dining-room, while Strick- 
land brought a gardener’s ladder from the 
veranda and set it against the side of the 
room. The snake tails drew themselves 
up and disappeared. We could hear the 
dry rushing scuttle of long bodies running 
over the baggy cloth. Strickland took a 
lamp with him, while I tried to make clear 
the danger of hunting roof snakes between 
a ceiling-cloth and a thatch, apart from the 


The Recrudescence of Imray 6i 

deterioration of property caused by ripping 
out ceiling-cloths. 

“Nonsense!” said Strickland. “They're 
sure to hide near the walls by the cloth. 
The bricks are too cold for ’em, and the 
heat of the room is just what they like.” 
He put his hand to the corner of the cloth 
and ripped the rotten stuff from the cor- 
nice. It gave a great sound of tearing, 
and Strickland put his head through the 
opening into the dark of the angle of the 
roof beams. I set my teeth and lifted the 
loading-rod, for I had not the least knowl- 
edge of what might descend. 

“ H’m,” said Strickland; and his voice 
rolled and rumbled in the roof. “There’s 
room for another set of rooms up here, 
and, by Jove! some one is occupying ’em.” 

“Snakes?” I said down below. 

“ No. It’s a buffalo. Hand me up the 
two first joints of a masheer rod, and I’ll 
prod it. It’s lying on the main beam.” 

I handed up the rod. 

“What a nest for owls and serpents! 
No wonder the snakes live here,” said 
Strickland, climbing further into the roof. 
I could see his elbow thrusting with the 
rod. “ Comejout of that, whoever you are! 
Look out! Heads below there! It’s 
tottering.” 

I saw the ceiling-cloth nearly in the cen- 
ter of the room bag with a shape that was 


62 Mine Own People 

pressing it downward a.nd downward to- 
ward the lighted lamps on the table. I 
snatched a lamp out of danger and stood 
back. Then the cloth ripped out from the 
walls, tore, split, swayed, and shot down 
upon the table something that I dared not 
look at till Strickland had slid down the 
ladder and was standing by my side. 

He did not say much, being a man of few 
words, but he picked up the loose end of 
the table-cloth and threw it over the thing 
on the table. 

“ It strikes me,” said he, pulling down 
the lamp, “ our friend Imray has come 
back. Oh ! you would, would you ? ” 

There was a movement under the cloth, 
and a little snake wriggled out, to be back- 
broken by the butt of the masheer rod. I 
was sufficiently sick to make no remarks 
worth recording. 

Strickland meditated and helped himself 
to drinks liberally. The thing under the 
cloth made no more signs of life. 

“ Is it Imray? ” I said. 

Strickland turned back the cloth for a 
moment and looked. “ It is Imray,” he 
said, “ and his throat is cut from ear to 
ear.” 

Then we spoke both together and to our- 
selves : “ That’s why he whispered about 

the house.” 

Tietjens, in the garden, began to bay 


The Recrudescence of Imray 63 

furiously. A little later her great nose 
heaved upon the dining-room door. 

She sniffed and was still. The broken 
and tattered ceiling-cloth hung down 
almost to the level of the table, and there 
was hardly room to move away from the 
discovery. 

Then Tietjens came in and sat down, her 
teeth bared and her forepaws planted. She 
looked at Strickland. 

“ It’s bad business, old lady,” said he. 
“ Men don’t go up into the roofs of their 
bungalows to die, and they don’t fasten up 
the ceiling-cloth behind ’em. Let’s think 
it out.” 

“ Let’s think it out somewhere else,” I 
said. 

“Excellent idea! Turn the lamps out. 
We’ll get into my room.” 

I did not turn the lamps out. I went 
into Strickland’s room first and allowed 
him to make the darkness. Then he fol- 
lowed me, and we lighted tobacco and 
thought. Strickland did the thinking. I 
smoked furiously because I was afraid. 

“ Imray is back,” said Strickland. “ The 
question is, who killed Imray? Don’t talk 
— I have a notion of my own. When I 
took this bungalow I took most of Imray’s 
servants. Imray was guileless and inoffen- 
sive, wasn’t he?” 

I agreed, though the heap under the 


64 Mine Own People 

cloth looked neither one thing nor the 
other. 

“ If I call the servants they will stand 
fast in a crowd and lie like Aryans. What 
do you suggest? ” 

“ Call ’em in one by one,” I said. 

“ They’ll run away and give the news to 
all their fellows,” said Strickland. 

“We must segregate ’em. Do you sup- 
pose your servant knows anything about 
it? ” 

“ He may, for aught I know, but I don’t 
think it’s likely. He has only been here 
two or three days.” 

“What’s your notion?” I asked. 

“ I can’t quite tell. How the dickens 
did the man get the wrong side of the ceil- 
ing-cloth? ” 

There was a heavy coughing outside 
Strickland’s bedroom door. This showed 
that Bahadur Khan, his body-servant, had 
waked from sleep and wished to put Strick- 
land to bed. 

“ Come in,” said Strickland. “ It is a 
very warm night, isn’t it? ” 

Bahadur Khan, a great, green-turbaned, 
six-foot Mohammedan, said that it was a 
very warm night, but that there was more 
rain pending, which, by his honor’s favor, 
would bring relief to the country. 

“ It will be so, if God pleases,” said 
Strickland, tugging off his boots. “ It is 


The Recrudescence of Imray 65 

in my mind, Bahadur Khan, that I have 
worked thee remorselessly for many days — 
ever since that time when thou first earnest 
into my service. What time was that? ” 

“ Has the heaven-born forgotten? It 
was when Imray Sahib went secretly to 
Europe without warning given, and I — 
even I — came into the honored service of 
the protector of the poor. 

“ And Imray Sahib went to Europe? ” 

“ It is so said among the servants.” 

“ And thou wilt take service with him 
when he returns? ” 

“ Assuredly, sahib. He was a good mas- 
ter and cherished his dependents.” 

“ That is true. I am very tired, but I 
can go buck-shooting to-morrow. Give 
me the little rifle that I use for black buck; 
it is in the case yonder.” 

The man stooped over the case, handed 
barrels, stock, and fore-end to Strickland, 
who fitted them together. Yawning dole- 
fully, then he reached down to the gun- 
case, took a solid drawn cartridge, and 
slipped it into the breech of the .360 
express. 

“ And Imray Sahib has gone to Europe 
secretly? That is very strange, Bahadur 
Khan, is it not? ” 

” What do I know of the ways of the 
white man, heaven-born?” 

V ery little, truly. But thou shalt know 


66 Mine Own People 

more. It has reached me that Imray Sahib 
has returned from his so long journeyings, 
and that even now he lies in the next room, 
waiting his servant.” 

“ Sahib!” 

The lamp-light slid along the barrels of 
the rifle as they leveled themselves against 
Bahadur Khan’s broad breast. 

“ Go, then, and look I ” said Strickland. 

“ Take a lamp. Thy master is tired, and 
he waits. Go ! ” 

The man picked up a lamp and went into 
the dining-room, Strickland following, and 
almost pushing him with the muzzle of the 
rifle. He looked for a moment at the 
black depths behind the ceiling-cloth, at 
the carcass of the mangled snake under 
foot, and last, a gray glaze setting on his 
face, at the thing under the table-cloth. 

“ Hast thou seen? ” said Strickland, after 
a pause. ■ 

“ I have seen. I am clay in the white 
man’s hands. What does the presence 
do?” 

“ Hang thee within a month ! What 
else? ” 

“ For killing him? Nay, sahib, con- 
sider. Walking among us, his servants, he 
cast his eyes upon my child, who was four 
years old. Him he bewitched, and in ten 
days he died of the fever. My child!” 

What said Imray Sahib? ” 


The Recrudescence of Imray 67 

“ He said he was a handsome child, and 
patted him on the head; wherefore my 
child died. Wherefore I killed Imray 
Sahib in the twilight, when he came back 
from office and was sleeping. The heaven- 
born knows all things. I am the servant 
of the heaven-born.” 

Strickland looked at me above the rifle, 
and said, in the vernacular: “Thou art 
witness to this saying. He has killed.” 

Bahadur Khan stood ashen gray in the 
light of the one lamp. The need for justi- 
fication came upon him very swiftly. 

“ I am trapped,” he said, “ but the of- 
fense was that man’s. He cast an evil eye 
upon my child, and I killed and hid him. 
Only such as are served by devils,” he 
glared at Tietjens, crouched stolidly before 
him, “ only such could know what I did.” 

“ It was clever. But thou shouldst have 
lashed him to the beam with a rope. Now, 
thou thyself wilt hang by a rope. 
Orderly! ” 

A drowsy policeman answered Strick- 
land’s call. He was followed by another, 
and Tietjens sat still. 

“Take him to the station,” said Strick- 
land. “ There is a case toward.” 

“ Do I hang, then? ” said Bahadur Khan, 
making no attempt to escape and keeping 
his eyes on the ground. 

“ If the sun shines, or the water runs, 


68 Mine Own People 

thou wilt hang,” said Strickland. Bahadur 
Khan stepped back one pace, quivered, and 
stood still. The two policemen waited fur- 
ther orders. 

“ Go! ” said Strickland. 

“Nay; but I go very swiftly,” said Ba- 
hadur Khan. Look ! I am even now a dead 
man.” 

He lifted his foot, and to the little toe 
there clung the head of the half-killed 
snake, firm fixed in the agony of death. 

“ I come of land-holding stock,” said 
Bahadur Khan, rocking where he stood.^ 
“ It were a disgrace for me to go to the 
public scaffold, therefore I take this way. 
Be it remembered that the sahib’s shirts 
are correctly enumerated, and that there is 
an extra piece of soap in his wash-basin. 
My child was bewitched, and I slew the 
wizard. Why should you seek to slay me? 
My honor is saved, and — and — I die.” 

At the end of an hour he died as they 
die who are bitten by the little kariat, and 
the policemen bore him and the thing 
under the table-cloth to their appointed 
places. They were needed to make clear 
the disappearance of Imray. 

“ This,” said Strickland, very calmly, as 
he climbed into bed, “ is called the nine- 
teenth century. Did you hear what that 
man said? ” 


The Recrudescence of Imray 69 

“ I heard,” I answered. “ Imray made 
a mistake.” 

“ Simply and solely through not knowing 
the nature and coincidence of a little sea- 
sonal fever. Bahadur Khan has been with 
him for four years.” 

I shuddered. My own servant had been 
with me for exactly that length of time. 
When I went over to my own room I 
found him waiting, impassive as the copper 
head on a penny, to pull off my boots. 

“ What has befallen Bahadur Khan? ” 
said I. 

“ He was bitten by a snake and died; 
the rest the sahib knows,” was the answer. 

“ And how much of the matter hast thou 
known? ” 

“ As much as might be gathered from 
one coming in the twilight to seek satisfac- 
tion. Gently, sahib. Let me pull off those 
boots.” 

I had just settled to the sleep of exhaus- 
tion when I heard Strickland shouting from 
his side of the house: 

“Tietjens has come back to her room! ” 

And so she had. The great deerhound 
was couched on her own bedstead, on her 
own blanket, and in the next room the idle, 
empty ceiling-cloth wagged light-heartedly 
as it flailed on the table. 


MOTI GUJ-MUTINEER 


Once upon a time there was a coffee- 
planter in India who wished to clear some 
forest land for coffee-planting. When he 
had cut down all the trees and burned the 
underwood, the stumps still remained. 
Dynamite is expensive and slow fire slow. 
The happy medium for stump-clearing is 
the lord of all beasts, who is the elephant. 
He will either push the stump out of the 
ground with his tusks, if he has any, or 
drag it out with ropes. The planter, there- 
fore, hired elephants by ones and twos and 
threes, and fell to work. The very best of 
all the elephants belonged to the very worst 
of all the drivers or mahouts; and this 
superior beast’s name was Moti Guj. He 
was the absolute property of his mahout, 
which would never have been the case un- 
der native rule: for Moti Guj was a creature 
to be desired by kings, and his name, being 
translated, meant the Pearl Elephant. Be- 
cause the British government was in the 
land, Deesa, the mahout, enjoyed his prop- 


70 


Moti Guj — Mutineer 71 

erty undisturbed. He was dissipated. 
When he had made much money through 
the strength of his elephant, he would get 
extremely drunk and give Moti Guj a beat- 
ing with a tent-peg over the tender nails of 
the forefeet. Moti Guj never trampled the 
life out of Deesa on these occasions, for he 
knew that after the beating was over, Deesa 
would embrace his trunk and weep and call 
him his love and his life and the liver of 
his soul, and give him some liquor. Moti 
Guj was very fond of liquor — arrack for 
choice, though he would drink palm-tree 
toddy if nothing better offered. Then 
Deesa would go to sleep between Moti 
Guj’s forefeet, and as Deesa generally chose 
the middle of the public road, and as Moti 
Guj mounted guard over him, and would 
not permit horse, foot, or cart to pass by, 
traffic was congested till Deesa saw fit to 
wake up. 

There was no sleeping in the day-time on 
the planter’s clearing: the wages were too 
high to risk. Deesa sat on Moti Guj’s 
neck and gave him orders, while Moti Guj 
rooted up the stumps — for he owned a 
magnificent pair of tusks; or pulled at the 
end of a rope — for he had a magnificent 
pair of shoulders — while Deesa kicked 
him behind the ears and said he was the 
king of elephants. At evening time Moti 
Guj would wash down his three hundred 


72 Mine Own People 

pounds’ weight of green food with a quart 
of arrack, and Deesa would take a share, 
and sing songs between Moti Guj’s legs 
till it was time to go to bed. Once a week 
Deesa led Moti Guj down to the river, and 
Moti Guj lay on his side luxuriously in the 
shallows, while Deesa went over him with 
a coir swab and a brick. Moti Guj never 
mistook the pounding blow of the latter for 
the smack of the former that warned him 
to get up and turn over on the other side. 
Then Deesa would look at his feet and ex- 
amine his eyes, and turn up the fringes of 
his mighty ears in case of sores or budding 
ophthalmia. After inspection the two 
would “ come up with a song from the sea,” 
Moti Guj, all black and shining, waving a 
torn tree branch twelve feet long in his 
trunk, and Deesa knotting up his own long 
wet hair. 

It was a peaceful, well-paid life till Deesa 
felt the return of the desire to drink deep. 
He wished for an orgy. The little draughts 
that led nowhere were taking the manhood 
out of him. 

He went to the planter, and “ My 
mother’s dead,” said he, weeping. 

“ She died on the last plantation two 
months ago, and she died once before that 
when you were working for me last year,” 
said the planter, who knew something of 
the ways of nativedom. 


Moti Guj — Mutineer 73 

“ Then it’s my aunt, and she was just the 
same as a mother to me,” said Deesa, weep- 
ing more than ever. “ She has left eigh- 
teen small children entirely without bread, 
and it is I who must fill their little stom- 
achs,” said Deesa, beating his head on the 
floor. 

“ Who brought you the news? ” said the 
planter. 

“ The post,” said Deesa. 

“ There hasn’t been a post here for the 
past week. Get back to your lines ! ” 

“ A devastating sickness has fallen on 
my village, and all my wives are dying,” 
yelled Deesa, really in tears this time. 

“ Call Chihun, who comes from Deesa’s 
village,” said the planter. “ Chihun, has 
this man got a wife? ” 

“He?” said Chihun. “No. Not a 
woman of our village would look at him. 
They’d sooner marry the elephant.” 

Chihun snorted. Deesa wept and bel- 
lowed. 

“ You will get into a difficulty in a min- 
ute,” said the planter. “ Go back to your 
work ! ” 

“ Now I will speak Heaven’s truth,” 
gulped Deesa, with an inspiration. “ I 
haven’t been drunk for two months. I de- 
sire to depart in order to get properly 
drunk afar off and distant from this heav- 


74 Mine Own People 

enly plantation. Thus I shall cause no 
trouble.” 

A flickering smile crossed the planter’s 
face. “ Deesa,” said he, “ you’ve spoken 
the truth, and I’d give you leave on the 
spot if anything could be done with Moti 
Guj while you’re away. You know that he 
will only obey your orders.” 

“ May the light of the heavens live forty 
thousand years. I shall be absent but ten 
little days. After that, upon my faith and 
honor and soul, I return. As to the incon- 
siderable interval, have I the gracious per- 
mission of the heaven-born to call up Moti 
Guj?” 

Permission was granted, and in answer 
to Deesa’s shrill yell, the mighty tusker 
swung out of the shade of a clump of trees 
where he had been squirting dust over him- 
self till his master should return, 

“ Light of my heart, protector of the 
drunken, mountain of might, give ear!” 
said Deesa, standing in front of him, 

Moti Guj gave ear, and saluted with his 
trunk. “ I am going away,” said Deesa. 

Moti Guj’s eyes twinkled. He liked 
jaunts as well as his master. One could 
snatch all manner of nice things from the 
road-side then. 

“ But you, you fussy old pig, must stay 
behind and work.” 

The twinkle died out as Moti Guj tried 


Moti Guj -- Mutineer 75 

to look delighted. He hated stump-haul- 
\ ing on the plantation. It hurt his teeth. 

“ I shall be gone for ten days, oh, delec- 
table one ! Hold up your near forefoot and 
I’ll impress the fact upon it, warty toad of 
a dried mud-puddle.” Deesa took a tent- 
peg and banged Moti Guj ten times on the 
nails. Moti Guj grunted and shuffled from 
foot to foot. 

“ Ten days,” said Deesa, “ you will work 
and haul and root the trees as Chihun here 
shall order you. Take up Chihun and set 
him on your neck ! ” Moti Guj curled the 
tip of his trunk, Chihun put his foot there, 
and was swung on to the neck. Deesa 
handed Chihun the heavy ankus — the iron 
elephant goad. 

Chihun thumped Moti Guj’s bald head 
as a paver thumps a curbstone. 

I Moti Guj trumpeted. 

“ Be still, hog of the backwoods ! Chi- 
hun’s your mahout for ten days. And 
now bid me good-bye, beast after mine own 
heart. Oh, my lord, my king! Jewel of 
all created elephants, lily of the herd, pre- 
serve your honored health; be virtuous. 
Adieu ! ” 

Moti Guj lapped his trunk round Deesa 
and swung him into the air twice. That 
was his way of bidding him good-bye. 

“ He’ll work now,” said Deesa to the 
planter. “ Have I leave to go? ” 


y6 Mine Own People 

The planter nodded, and Deesa dived 
into the woods. Moti Guj went back to 
haul stumps. 

Chihun was very kind to him, but he felt 
unhappy and forlorn for all that. Chihun 
gave him a ball of spices, and tickled him 
under the chin, and Chihun’s little baby 
cooed to him after work was over, and 
Chihun’s wife called him a darling; but 
Moti Guj was a bachelor by instinct, as 
Deesa was. He did not understand the 
domestic emotions. He wanted the light 
of his universe back again — the drink and 
the drunken slumber, the savage beatings 
and the savage caresses. 

None the less he worked well, and the 
planter wondered. Deesa had wandered 
along the roads till he met a marriage pro- 
cession of his own caste, and, drinking, 
dancing, and tippling, had drifted with it 
past all knowledge of the lapse of time. 

The morning of the eleventh day dawned, 
and there returned no Deesa. Moti Guj 
was loosed from his ropes for the daily 
stint. He swung clear, looked round, 
shrugged his shoulders, and began to walk 
away, as one having business elsewhere. 

“Hi! ho! Come back you!” shouted 
Chihun. “ Come back and put me on your 
neck, misborn mountain! Return, splen- 
dor of the hill-sides! Adornment of all 


Moti Guj -- Mutineer 77 

India, heave to, or I’ll bang every toe off 
your fat forefoot! ” 

Moti Guj gurgled gently, but did not 
obey. Chihun ran after him with a rope 
and caught him up Moti Guj put his ears 
forward, and Chihun knew what that 
meant, though he tried to carry it off with 
high words. 

“ None of your nonsense with me,” said 
he. “ To your pickets, devil-son! ” 

“ Hrrump! ” said Moti Guj, and that was 
all — that and the forebent ears. 

Moti Guj put his hands in his pockets, 
chewed a branch for a toothpick, and 
strolled about the clearing, making fun of 
the other elephants who had just set to 
work. 

Chihun reported the state of affairs to 
the planter, who came out with a dog-whip 
and cracked it furiously. Moti Guj paid 
the white man the compliment of charging 
him nearly a quarter of a mile across the 
clearing and “Hrrumphing” him into his 
veranda. Then he stood outside the house, 
chuckling to himself and shaking all over 
with the fun of it, as an elephant will. 

“ We’ll thrash him,” said the planter. 

“ He shall have the finest thrashing ever 
elephant received. Give Kala Nag and 
Nazin twelve foot of chain apiece, and tell 
them to lay on twenty.” 

Kala Nag — which means Black Snake 


78 Mine Own People 

— and Nazim were two of the biggest ele- 
phants in the lines, and one of their duties 
was to administer the graver punishment, 
since no man can beat an elephant properly. 

They took the whipping-chains and rat- 
tled them in their trunks as they sidled up 
to Moti Guj meaning to hustle him between 
them. Moti Guj had never, in all his life of 
thirty-nine years, been whipped, and he did 
not intend to begin a new experience. So 
he waited, waving his head from right to 
left, and measuring the precise spot in Kala 
Nag’s fat side where a blunt tusk could sink 
deepest. Kala Nag had no tusks; the 
chain was his badge of authority; but for 
all that, he swung wide of Moti Guj at the 
last minute, and tried to appear as if he 
had brought the chain out for amusement. 
Nazim turned round and went home early. 
He did not feel fighting fit that morning, 
and so Moti Guj was left standing alone 
with his ears cocked. 

That decided the planter to argue no 
more, and Moti Guj rolled back to his 
amateur inspection of the clearing. An 
elephant who will not work and is not tied 
up is about as manageable as an eighty- 
one-ton gun loose in a heavy seaway. He 
slapped old friends on the back and asked 
them if the stumps were coming away 
easily; he talked nonsense concerning labor 
and the inalienable rights of elephants to 


Mod Guj— Mudneer 79 

a long “ nooning; ” and, wandering to and 
fro, he thoroughly demoralized the garden 
till sundown, when he returned to his picket 
for food. 

“ If you won’t work, you sha’n’t eat,” 
said Chihun, angrily. “ You’re a wild ele- 
phant, and no educated animal at all. Go 
back to your jungle.” 

Chihun’s little brown baby was rolling on 
the floor of the hut, and stretching out its 
fat arms to the huge shadow in the door- 
way. Moti Guj knew well that it was the 
dearest thing on earth to Chihun. He 
swung out his trunk with a fascinating 
crook at the end, and the brown baby threw 
itself, shouting, upon it. Moti Guj made 
fast and pulled up till the brown baby was 
crowing in the air twelve feet above his 
father’s head. 

“ Great Lord ! ” said Chihun. “ Flour 
cakes of the best, twelve in number, two 
feet across and soaked in rum, shall be 
yours on the instant, and two hundred 
pounds’ weight of fresh-cut young sugar- 
cane therewith. Deign only to put down 
safely that insignificant brat who is my 
heart and my life to me! ” 

Moti Guj tucked the brown baby com- 
fortably between his forefeet, that could 
have knocked into toothpicks all Chihun’s 
hut, and waited for his food. He eat it, 
and the brown baby crawled away. Moti 


8o 


Mine Own People 

Guj dozed and thought of Deesa. One of 
many mysteries connected with the ele- 
phant is that his huge body needs less sleep 
than anything else that lives. Four or five 
hours in the night suffice — two just before 
midnight, lying down on one side; two just 
after one o’clock, lying down on the other. 
The rest of the silent hours are filled with 
eating and fidgeting, and long grumbling 
soliloquies. 

At midnight, therefore, Moti Guj strode 
out of his pickets, for a thought had come 
to him that Deesa might be lying drunk 
somewhere in the dark forest with none to 
look after him.^ So all that night he chased 
through the undergrowth, blowing and 
trumpeting and shaking his ears. He went 
down to the river and blared across the 
shallows where Deesa used to wash him, 
but there was no answer. He could not 
1 find Deesa, but he disturbed all the other 
elephants in the lines, and nearly fright- 
ened to death some gypsies in the woods. 

At dawn Deesa returned to the planta- 
tion. He had been very drunk indeed, and 
he expected to get into trouble for outstay- 
ing his leave. He drew a long breath when 
he saw that the bungalow and the planta- 
tion were still uninjured, for he knew some- 
thing of Moti Guj’s temper, and reported 
himself with many lies and salaams. Moti 
Guj had gone to his pickets for breakfast. 


Moti Guj — Mutineer 8 1 

The night exercise had made him hungry. 

“ Call up your beast,” said the planter; 
and Deesa shouted in the mysterious ele- 
phant language that some mahouts believe 
came from China at the birth of the world, 
when elephants and not men weie masters. 
Moti Guj heard and came. Elephants do 
not gallop. They move from places at 
varying rates of speed. If an elephant 
wished to catch an express train he could 
not gallop, but he could catch the train. 
So Moti Guj was at the planter’s door 
almost before Chihun noticed that he had 
left his pickets. He fell into Deesa’s arms 
trumpeting with joy, and the man and 
beast wept and slobbered over each other, 
and handled each other- from head to heel 
to see that no harm had befallen. 

“ Now we will get to work,” said Deesa. 
“ Lift me up, my son and my joy! ” 

Moti Guj swung him up, and the two 
went to the coffee-clearing to look for diffi- 
cult stumps. 

The planter was too astonished to be 
very angry. 


THE MUTINY OF THE 
MAVERICKS 


When three obscure gentlemen in San 
Francisco argued on insufficient premises, 
they condemned a fellow-creature to a most 
unpleasant death in a far country which 
had nothing whatever to do with the 
United States. They foregathered at the 
top of a tenement-house in Tehama Street, 
an unsavory quarter of the city, and there 
calling for certain drinks, they conspired 
because they were conspirators by trade, 
officially known as the Third Three of the 
1. A. A. — an institution for the propaga- 
tion of pure light, not to be confounded 
with any others, though it is affiliated to 
many. The Second Three live in Montreal 
and work among the poor there; the First 
Three have their home in New York, not 
far from Castle Garden, and write regularly 
once a week to a small house near one of 
the big hotels at Boulogne. What happens 
after that, a particular section of Scotland 
82 


Mutiny of the Mavericks 83 

Yards knows too well and laughs at. A 
conspirator detests ridicule. More men 
have been stabbed with Lucrezia Borgia 
daggers and dropped into the Thames for 
laughing at head centers and triangles than 
for betraying secrets; for this is human 
nature. 

The Third Three conspired over whisky 
cocktails and a clean sheet of note-paper 
against the British Empire and all that lay 
therein. This work is very like what men 
without discernment call politics before a 
general election. You pick out and discuss 
in the company of congenial friends all the 
weak points in your opponents’ organiza- 
tion, and unconsciously dwell upon and 
exaggerate all their mishaps, till it seems 
to you a miracle that the party holds to- 
gether for an hour. 

“ Our principle is not so much active 
demonstration — that we leave to others — 
as passive embarrassment to weaken and 
unnerve,” said the first man. “ Wherever 
an organization is crippled, wherever a con- 
fusion is thrown into any branch of any 
department, we gain a step for those who 
take on the work; we are but the forerun- 
ners.” He was a German enthusiast, and 
editor of a newspaper, from whose leading 
articles he quoted frequently. 

“That cursed empire makes so many 
blunders of her own that unless we doubled 


84 Mine Own People 

the year’s average I guess it wouldn’t strike 
her anything special had occurred,” said 
the second man. “ Are you prepared to 
say that all our resources are equal to blow- 
ing off the muzzle of a hundred-ton gun or 
spiking a ten-thousand-ton ship on a plain' 
rock in clear daylight? They can beat usi 
at our game. Better join hands with the 
practical branches ; we’re in funds now. 
Try and direct a scare in a crowded street. 
They value their greasy hides.” He was 
the drag upon the wheel, and an American- 
ized Irishman of the second generation, de- 
spising his own race and hating the other. 
He had learned caution. 

The third man drank his cocktail and 
spoke no word. He was the strategist, but 
unfortunately his knowledge of life was lim- 
ited. He picked a letter from his breast- 
pocket and threw it across the table. That 
epistle to the heathen contained some very 
concise directions from the First Three in 
New York. It said: 

“ The boom in black iron has already 
affected the eastern markets, where our_ 
agents have been forcing down the Eng- 
lish-held stock among the smaller buyers 
who watch the turn of shares. Any imme- 
diate operations, such as western bears, 
would increase their willingness to unload. 
This, however, can not be expected till 
they see clearly that foreign ironmasters 


Mutiny of the Mavericks 85 

are willing to co-operate. Mulcahy should 
be dispatched to feel the pulse of the mar- 
h'et, and act accordingly. Mavericks are 
at present the best for our purpose. — P. 
D. Q.” 

As a message referring to an iron crisis 
in Pennsylvania it was interesting, if not 
lucid. As a new departure in organized 
attack on an outlying English dependency, 
it was more than interesting. 

The first man read it through, and mur- 
mured: 

“Already? Surely they are in too great 
a hurry. All that Dhulip Singh could do 
in India he has done, down to the distribu- 
tion of his photographs among the peas- 
antry. Ho! Ho! The Paris firm ar- 
ranged that, and he has no substantial 
money backing from the Other Power. 
Even our agents in India know he hasn’t. 
What is the use of our organization wasting 
men on work that is already done? Of 
course, the Irish regiments in India are 
half mutinous as they stand.” 

This shows how near a lie may come to 
the truth. An Irish regiment, for just so 
long as it stands still, is generally a hard 
handful to control, being reckless and 
rough. When, however, it is moved in the 
direction of musketry-fire, it becomes 
strangely and unpatriotically content with 
its lot. It has even been heard to cheer 


86 Mine Own People ^ 

the queen with enthusiasm on these occa- 
sions. 

But the notion of tampering with the 
army was, from the point of view of 
Tehama Street, an altogether sound one. 
There is no shadow of stability in the pol- 
icy of an English government, and the 
most sacred oaths of England would, even 
if embossed on vellum, find very few buy- 
ers among colonies and dependencies that 
have suffered from vain beliefs. But there 
remains to England always her army. 
That can not change, except in the matter 
of uniform and equipment. The officers 
may write to the papers demanding the 
heads of the Horse Guards in default of 
cleaner redress for grievances; the men 
may break loose across a country town, 
and seriously startle the publicans, but 
neither officers nor men have it in their 
composition to mutiny after the Conti- 
nental manner. The English people, when 
they trouble to think about the army at all, 
are, and with justice, absolutely assured 
that it is absolutely trustworthy. Imagine 
for a moment their emotions on realizing 
that such and such a regiment was in open 
revolt from causes directly due to Eng- 
land’s management of Ireland. They 
would probably send the regiment to the 
polls forthwith, and examine their own con- 
sciences as to their duty to Erin, but they 


Mutiny of the Mavericks 87 

would never be easy any more. And it 
'was this vague, unhappy mistrust that the 
I. A. A. was laboring to produce. 

“ Sheer waste of breath,” said the second 
man, after a pause in the council. “ I don’t 
see the use of tampering with their fool- 
army, but it has been tried before, and we 
must try it again. It looks well in the 
reports. If we send one man from here, 
you may bet your life that other men are 
going too. Order up Mulcahy.” 

They ordered him up — a slim, slight, 
dark-haired young man, devoured with that 
blind, rancorous hatred of England that 
only reaches its full growth across the At- 
lantic. He had sucked it from his mother's 
breast in the little cabin at the back of the 
northern avenues of New York; he had 
been taught his rights and his wrongs, in 
German and Irish, on the canal fronts of 
Chicago; and San Francisco held men who 
told him strange and awful things of the 
great blind power over the seas. Once, 
when business took him across the Atlan- 
tic, he had served in an English regiment, 
and being insubordinate, had suffered ex- 
tremely. He drew all his ideas of England 
that were not bred by the cheaper patriotic 
print, from one iron-fisted colonel and an 
unbending adjutant. He would go to the 
mines if need be to teach his gospel. And 
he went as his instructions advised, p. d. q, 


88 


Mine Own People 

— which means “with speed” — to intro- 
duce embarrassment into an Irish regi- 
ment, “ already half mutinous, quartered 
among Sikh peasantry, all wearing minia- 
tures of His Highness Dhulip Singh, Ma- 
haraja of the Punjab, next their hearts, and 
all eagerly expecting his arrival ” Other 
information equally valuable was given him 
by his masters. He was to be cautious, 
but never to grudge expense in winning the 
hearts of the men in the regiment. His 
mother in New York would supply funds, 
and he was to write to her once a month. 
Life is pleasant for a man who has a mother 
in New York to send him £200 a year over 
and above his regimental pay. 

In process of time, thanks to his intimate 
knowledge of drill and musketry exercise, 
the excellent Mulcahy, wearing the cor- 
poral’s stripe, went out in a troop-ship and 
joined Her Majesty’s Royal Loyal Mus- 
keteers, commonly known as the “ Mav- 
ericks,” because they were masterless and 
unbranded cattle — sons of small farmers 
in County Clare, shoeless vagabonds of 
Kerry, herders of Ballyvegan, much 
wanted “ moonlighters ” from the bare 
rainy headlands of the south coast, officered 
by O’Mores, Bradys, Hills, Kilreas, and 
the like. Never, to outward seeming, was 
there more promising material to work on. 
The First Three had chosen their regiment 


Mutiny of the Mavericks 89 

well. It feared nothing that moved or 
talked save the colonel and the regimental 
Roman Catholic chaplain, the fat Father 
Dennis, who held the keys of heaven and 
hell, and glared like an angry bull when 
he desired to be convincing. Him also 
it loved because on occasions of stress he 
was wont to tuck up his cassock and charge 
with the rest into the merriest of the fray, 
where he always found, good man, that 
the saints sent him a revolver when there 
was a fallen private to be protected or — 
but this came as an after-thought — his 
own gray head to be guarded. 

Cautiously as he had been instructed, ten- 
derly and with much beer, Mulcahy opened 
his projects to such as he deemed fittest to 
listen. And these were, one and all, of that 
quaint, crooked, sweet, profoundly irre- 
sponsible, and profoundly lovable race that 
fight like fiends, argue like children, reason 
like women, obey like men, and jest like 
their own goblins of the wrath through re- 
bellion, loyalty, want, woe, or war. The 
underground work of a conspiracy is al- 
ways dull, and very much the same the 
world over. At the end of six months — 
the seed always falling on good ground — 
Mulcahy spoke almost explicitly, hinting 
darkly in the approved fashion at dread 
powers behind him, and advising nothing 
more nor less than mutiny. Were they not 


go Mine Own People 

dogs, evilly treated? had they not all their 
own and the natural revenges to satisfy? 
Who in these days could do aught to nine 
hundred men in rebellion? who, again, 
could stay them if they broke for the sea, 
licking up on their way other regiments 
only too anxious to join? And afterward 
. . . here followed windy promises of 

gold and preferment, office and honor, ever 
dear to a certain type of Irishman, 

As he finished his speech, in the dusk 
of a twilight, to his chosen associates, there 
was a sound of a rapidly unslung belt be- 
hind him. The arm of one Dan Grady 
flew out in the gloom and arrested some- 
thing. Then said Dan: 

“ Mulcahy, you’re a great man, an’ you 
do credit to whoever sent you. Walk about 
a bit while we think of it.” Mulcahy de- 
parted elated. He knew his words would 
sink deep. 

“ Why the triple-dashed asterisks did ye 
not let me curl the tripes out of him?” 
grunted a voice. 

“ Because I’m not a fat-headed fool. 
Boys, ’tis what he’s been driving at these 
six months — our superior corpril, with 
his education, and his copies of the Irish 
papers, and his everlasting beer. He’s 
been sent for the purpose, and that’s where 
the money comes from. Can ye not see? 
That man’s a gold-mine, which Horse 


Mutiny of the Mavericks 91 

Egan here would have destroyed with a 
belt-buckle. It would be throwing away 
the gifts of Providence not to fall in with 
his little plans. Of course we’ll mutiny till 
all’s dry. Shoot the colonel on the parade- 
ground, • massacre the company officers, 
ransack the arsenal, and then — boys, did 
he tell you what next? He told me the 
other night, when he was beginning to talk 
wild. Then we’re to join with the niggers, 
and look for help from Dhulip Singh and 
the Russians ! ” 

“ And spoil the best campaign that ever 
was this side of hell! Danny, I’d have lost 
the beer to ha’ given him the belting he 
requires.” 

“ Oh, let him go this awhile, man! He’s 
got no — no constructiveness; but that’s 
the egg-meat of his plan, and you must 
understand that I’m in with it, an’ so are 
you. We’ll want oceans of beer to con- 
vince us — firmaments full. We’ll give him 
talk for his money, and one by one all the 
boys’ll come in, and he’ll have a nest of 
nine hundred mutineers to squat in an’ give 
drink to.” 

“What makes me killing mad is his 
wanting us to do what the niggers did 
thirty years gone. That an’ his pig’s cheek 
in saying that other regiments would come 
along,” said a Kerry man. 


92 Mine Own People 

“That’s not so bad as hintin’ we should 
loose off at the colonel.” 

“ Colonel be sugared! I’d as soon as 
not put a shot through his helmet, to see 
him jump and clutch his old horse’s head. 
But Mulcahy talks o’ shootin’ our comp’ny 
orf’cers accidental.” 

“He said that, did he?” said Horse 
Egan. 

“ Somethin’ like that, anyways. Can’t 
ye fancy ould Barber Brady wid a bullet 
in his lungs, coughin’ like a sick monkey 
an’ sayin’: ‘ Bhoys, I do not mind your 
gettin’ dhrunk, but you must hould your 
liquor like men. The man that shot me 
is dhrunk. I’ll suspend investigations for 
six hours, while I get this bullet cut out, 
and then ’ ” 

“ An’ then,” continued Horse Egan, for 
the peppery major’s peculiarities of speech 
and manner were as well known as his 
tanned face — “ an’ then, ye dissolute, half- 
baked, putty-faced scum o’ Connemara, if 
I find a man so much as lookin’ confused, 
bedad I’ll coort-martial the whole com- 
pany. A man that can’t get over his liquor 
in six hours is not fit to belong to the 
Mavericks! ” 

A shout of laughter bore witness to the 
truth of the sketch. 

“ It’s pretty to think of,” said the Kerry 
man slowly. “ Mulcahy would have us do 


Mutiny of the Mavericks 93 

all the devilment, and get clear himself, 
someways. He wudn’t be takin’ all this 
fool’s throuble in shpoilin’ the reputation 
of the regiment.” 

“ Reputation of your grandmother’s 
pig! ” said Dan. 

“ Well, an’ he had a good reputation, too; 
so it’s all right. Mulcahy must see his way 
clear out behind him, or he’d not ha’ come 
so far, talkin’ powers of darkness.” 

“ Did you hear anything of a regimental 
court-martial among the Black Boneens, 
these days? Half a company of ’em took 
one of the new draft an’ hanged him by 
his arms with a tent-rope from a third-story 
veranda. They gave no reason for so do- 
in’, but he was half head. I’m thinking 
that the Boneens are short-sighted. It was 
a friend of Mulcahy’s, or a man in the same 
trade. They’d a deal better ha’ taken his 
beer,” returned Dan, reflectively. 

“ Better still ha’ handed him up to the 
colonel,” said Horse Egan, “ onless — But 
sure the news wud be all over the counthry 
an’ give the reg’ment a bad name.” 

“ An’ there’d be no reward for that man 
— but he went about talkin’,” said the 
Kerry man, artlessly. 

“You speak by your breed,” said Dan, 
with a laugh. “ There was never a Kerry 
man yet that wudn’t sell his brother for a 


94 Mine Own People 

pipe o’ tobacco an’ a pat on the back from 
a policeman.” 

“ Thank God I’m not a bloomin’ Orange- 
man,” was the answer. 

“ No, nor never will be,” said Dan. 
“They breed men in Ulster. Would you 
like to thry the taste of one? ” 

The Kerry man looked and longed, but 
forebore. The odds of battle were too 
great. 

“Then you’ll not even give Mtilcahy a 
— a strike for his money,” said the voice 
of Horse Egan, who regarded what he 
called “ trouble ” of any kind as the pin- 
nacle of felicity. 

Dan answered not at all, but crept on 
tiptoe, with large strides, to the mess-room, 
the men following. The room was empty. 
In a corner, cased like the King of Da- 
homey’s state umbrella, stood the regi- 
mental colors. Dan lifted them tenderly, 
and unrolled in the light of the candles the 
record of the Mavericks — tattered, worn, 
and hacked. The white satin was darkened 
everywhere with big brown stains, the gold 
threads on the crowned harp were frayed 
and discolored, and the red bull, the totem 
of the Mavericks, was coffee-hued. The 
stiff, embroidered folds, whose price is 
human life, rustled down slowly. The 
Mavericks keep their colors long and 
guard them very sacredly. 


Mutiny of the Mavericks 95 

“Vittoria, Salamanca, Toulouse, Water- 
loo, Moodkee, Ferozshah, and Sobraon — 
that was fought close next door here, 
against the very beggars he wants us to 
join. Inkermann, the Alma, Sebastopol! 
What are those little businesses compared 
to the campaigns of General Mulcahy? 
The mut’ny, think o’ that; the mut’ny an’ 
some dirty little matters in Afghanistan, 
and for that an’ these and those ” — Dan 
pointed to the names of glorious battles — 
“ that Yankee man with the partin’ in his 
hair comes and says as easy as ‘ have a 
drink’ . . . Holy Moses! there’s the 

captain ! ” 

But it was the mess-sergeant who came 
in just as the men clattered out, and found 
the colors uncased. 

From that day dated the mutiny of the 
Mavericks, to the joy of Mulcahy and the 
pride of his mother in New York — the 
good lady who sent the money for the 
beer. Never, as far as words went, was 
such a mutiny. The conspirators, led by 
Dan Grady and Horse Egan, poured in 
daily. They were sound men, men to be 
trusted, and they all wanted blood; but first 
they must have beer. They cursed the 
queen, they mourned over Ireland, they 
suggested hideous plunder of the Indian 
country-side, and then, alas! some of the 
younger men would go forth and wallow 


g6 Mine Own People 

on the ground in spasms of unholy laugh- 
ter. The genius of the Irish for conspira- 
cies is remarkable. None the less, they 
would swear no oaths but those of their 
own making, which were rare and curious, 
and they were always at pains to impress , 
Mulcahy with the risks they ran. Natur- . 
ally the flood of beer wrought demoraliza- 
tion. But Mulcahy confused the causes of 
things, and when a pot-valiant Maverick 
smote a servant on the nose or called his 
commanding officer a bald-headed old lard- 
bladder, and even worse names, he fancied 
that rebellion and not liquor was at the 
bottom of the outbreak. Other gentlemen 
who have concerned themselves in larger 
conspiracies have made the same error. 

The hot season, in which they protested 
no man could rebel, came to an end, and 
Mulcahy suggested a visible return for his 
teachings. As to the actual upshot of the 
mutiny he cared nothing. It would be 
enough if the English, infatuatedly trust- 
ing to the integrity of their army, 
should be startled with news of an 
Irish regiment revolting from politi- 
cal considerations. His persistent de- 
mands would have ended, at Dan’s instiga- 
tion, in a regimental belting which in all 
probability would have killed him and cut 
off the supply of beer, had not he been 
sent on special duty some fifty miles away 


Mutiny of the Mavericks 97 

from the cantonment to cool his heels in 
a mud fort and dismount obsolete artillery. 
Then the colonel of the Mavericks, read- 
ing his newspaper diligently and scenting 
frontier trouble from afar, posted to the 
army headquarters and pleaded with the 
commander-in-chief for certain privileges, 
to be granted under certain contingencies; 
which contingencies came about only a 
week later when the annual little war on 
the border developed itself and the colonel 
returned to carry the good news to the 
Mavericks. He held the promise of the 
chief for active service, and the men must 
get ready. 

On the evening of the same day, Mul- 
cahy, an unconsidered corporal — yet great 
in conspiracy — returned to cantonments, 
and heard sounds of strife and bowlings 
from afar off. The mutiny had broken out, 
and the barracks of the Mavericks were one 
whitewashed pandemonium. A private 
tearing through the barrack square gasped 
in his ear: “Service! Active service! 
It’s a burnin’ shame.” Oh, joy, the Mav- 
ericks had risen on the eve of battle! 
They would not — noble and loyal sons of 
Ireland! — serve the queen longer. The 
news would flash through the country-side 
and over to England, and he — Mulcahy — 
the trusted of the Third Three, had brought 
about the crash. The private stood in the 


98 Mine Own People 

middle of the square and cursed colonel, 
regiment, officers, and doctor, particularly 
the doctor, by his gods. An orderly of the 
native cavalry regiment clattered through 
the mob of soldiers. He was half lifted, 
half dragged from his horse, beaten on the 
back with mighty hand-claps till his eyes 
watered, and called all manner of endear- 
ing names. Yes, the Mavericks had frater- 
nized with the native troops. Who, then, 
was the agent among the latter that had 
blindly wrought with Mulcahy so well? 

An officer slunk, almost ran, from the 
mess to a barrack. He was mobbed by the 
infuriated soldiery, who closed round but 
did not kill him, for he fought his way to 
shelter, flying for his life. Mulcahy could 
have wept with pure joy and thankfulness. 
The very prisoners in the guard-room were 
shaking the bars of their cells and howling 
like wild beasts, and from every barrack 
poured the booming as of a big war-drum. 

Mulcahy hastened to his own barrack. 
He could hardly hear himself speak. 
Eighty men were pounding with fist and 
heel the tables and trestles — eighty men 
flushed with mutiny, stripped to their shirt- 
sleeves, their knapsacks half-packed for the 
march to the sea, made the two-inch boards 
thunder again as they chanted to a tune 
that Mulcahy knew well, the Sacred War 
Song of the Mavericks: 


Mutiny of the Mavericks 99 


“ Listen in the north, my bo3'S, there’s trouble on 
the wind; 

Tramp o’ Cossacks hoofs in front, gray great-coats 
behind, 

Trouble on the frontier of a most amazin’ kind. 
Trouble on the water o’ the Oxus! ” 


Then as a table broke under the furious 
accompaniment : 


“ Hurrah 1 hurrah! its north by west we go; 
Hurrah! hurrah! the chance we wanted so; 

Let ’em hear the chorus from Umballa to Moscow, 
As we go marching to the Kremlin.” 


“ Mother of all the saints in bliss and all 
the devils in cinders, where’s my fine new 
sock widout the heel?” howled Horse 
Egan, ransacking everybody’s knapsack 
but his own. He was engaged in making 
up deficiencies of kit preparatory to a cam- 
paign, and in that employ he steals best 
who steals last. “Ah, Mulcahy, you’re in 
good time,” he shouted. “ We’ve got the 
route, and we’re off on Thursday for a pic- 
nic wid the Lancers next door.” 

An ambulance orderly appeared with a 
huge basket full of lint rolls, provided by 
the forethought of the queen, for such as ■ 
might need them later on. Horse Egan 
unrolled his bandage and flicked it under 
Mulcahy’s nose, chanting: 


“ ‘Sheep’s skin an’ bees’-wax, thunder, pitch and 
plaster; 

The more you try to pull it off, the more it sticks 
the faster. 

As I was goin’ to New Orleans ’ 


loo Mine Own People 

You know the rest of it, my Irish-Ameri- 
can-Jew boy. By gad, ye have to fight for 
the queen in the inside av a fortnight, my 
darlinV’ 

A roar of laughter interrupted. Mul- 
cahy looked vacantly down the room. Bid 
a boy defy his father when the pantomime- 
cab is at the door, or a girl develop a will 
of her own when her mother is putting the 
last touches to the first ball-dress, but do 
not ask an Irish regiment to embark upon 
mutiny on the eve of a campaign; when it 
has fraternized with the native regiment 
that accompanies it, and driven its officers 
into retirement with ten thousand clamor- 
ous questions, and the prisoners dance for 
joy, and the sick men stand in the open, 
calling down all known diseases on the 
head of the doctor who has certified that 
they are “ medically unfit for active ser- 
vice.” And even the Mavericks might 
have been mistaken for mutineers by one 
so unversed in their natures as Mulcahy. 
At dawn a girls’ school might have learned 
deportment from them. They knew that 
their colonel’s hand had closed, and that 
he who broke that iron discipline would 
not go to the front. Nothing in the world 
will persuade one of our soldiers when he 
is ordered to the north on the smallest of 
affairs, that he is not immediately going 
gloriously to slay Cossacks and cook his 


Mutiny of the Mavericks loi 

kettles in the palace of the czar. A few 
of the younger men mourned for Mulcahy’s 
beer, because the campaign was to be con- 
ducted on strict temperance principles, but, 
as Dan and Horse Egan said sternly: 
“ We’ve got the beerman with us; he shall 
drink now on his own hook.” 

Mulcahy had not taken into account the 
possibility of being sent on active service. 
He had made up his mind that he would 
not go under any circumstances; but for- 
tune was against him. 

“ Sick — you? ” said the doctor, who had 
served an unholy apprenticeship to his 
trade in Tralee poor-houses. “ You’re only 
homesick, and what you call varicose veins 
come from overeating. A little gentle ex- 
ercise will cure that.” And later; “Mul- 
cahy, my man, everybody is allowed to ap- 
ply for a sick certificate once. If he tries 
it twice, we call him by an ugly name. Go 
back to your duty, and let’s hear no more 
of your diseases.” 

I am ashamed to say that Horse Egan 
enjoyed the study of Mulcahy’s soul in 
those days, and Dan took an equal interest. 
Together they would communicate to their 
corporal all the dark lore of death that is 
the portion of those who have seen men 
die. Egan had the larger experience, but 
Dan the finer imagination. Mulcahy shiv- 
ered when the former spoke of the knife 


102 Mine Own People 

as an intimate acquaintance, or the latter 
dwelt with loving particularity on the fate 
of those who, wounded and helpless, had 
been overlooked by the ambulances, and 
had fallen into the hands of the Afghan 
women-folk. 

Mulcahy knew that the mutiny, for the 
present at least, was dead. Knew, too, 
that a change had come over Dan’s usually 
respectful attitude toward him, and Horse 
Egan’s laughter and frequent allusions to 
abortive conspiracies emphasized all that 
the conspirator had guessed. The horrible 
fascination of the death-stories, however, 
made him seek their society. He learned 
much more than he had bargained for; and 
in this manner. It was on the last night 
before the regiment entrained to the front. 
The barracks were stripped of everything 
movable, and the men were too excited to 
sleep. The bare walls gave out a heavy 
hospital smell of chloride of lime — a 
stench that depresses the soul. 

“ And what,” said Mulcahy in an awe- 
stricken whisper, after some conversation 
on the eternal subject, “ are you going to 
do to me, Dan?” This might have been 
the language of an able conspirator con- 
ciliating a weak spirit. 

“ You’ll see,” said Dan, grimly, turning 
over in his cot, “ or I rather shud say you’ll 
not see.” 


Mutiny of the Mavericks 103 

This was hardly the language of a weak 
spirit. Mulcahy shook under the bed- 
clothes. 

“ Be easy with him,” put in Egan from 
the next cot. “ He has got his chanst o’ 
goin’ clean. Listen, Mulcahy; all we want 
is for the good sake of the regiment that 
you take your death standing up, as a man 
shud. There be heaps an’ heaps of enemy 
— plenshus heaps. Go there an’ do all you 
can and die decent. You’ll die with a 
good name there. ’Tis not a hard thing 
considerin’.” 

Again Mulcahy shivered. 

“ And how could a man wish to die bet- 
ter than fightin’? ” added Dan, consolingly. 

“And if I won’t?” said the corporal in 
a dry whisper. 

“ There’ll be a dale of smoke,” returned 
j Dan, sitting up and ticking off the situa- 
1 tion on his fingers, “ sure to be, an’ the 
noise of the firin’ ’ll be tremenjus, an’ we’ll 
be running about up and down, the regi- 
ment will. But we, Horse and I — we’ll 
stay by you, Mulcahy, and never let you 
go. Maybe there’ll be an accident.” 

“ It’s playing it low on me. Let me go. 
For pity’s sake, let me go! I never did 
you harm, and — and I stood you as much 
beer as I could. Oh, don’t be hard on 
me, Dan! You are — you were in it, too. 
You won’t kill me up there, will you?” 


104 Mine Own People 

“ I’m not thinkin’ of the treason ; though 
you shud be glad any honest boys drank 
with you. It’s for the regiment. We 
can’t have the shame o’ you bringin’ 
shame on us. You went to the doctor 
quiet as a sick cat to get and stay behind 
an’ live with the women at the depot — 
you that wanted us to run to the sea in 
wolf-packs like the rebels none of your 
black blood dared to be! But we knew 
about your goin’ to the doctor, for he told 
it in mess, and it’s all over the regiment. 
Bein’ as we are your best friends, we didn’t 
allow any one to molest you yet. We will 
see to you ourselves. Fight which you 
will — us or the enemy — you’ll never lie 
in that cot again, and there’s more glory 
and maybe less kicks from fighting the 
enemy. That’s fair speakin’.” 

“ And he told us by word of mouth to go 
and join with the niggers — you’ve forgot- 
ten that, Dan,” said Horse Egan, to justify 
sentence. 

“ What’s the use of plaguin’ the man? 
One shot pays for all. Sleep ye sound, 
Mulcahy. But you onderstand, do ye 
not?” 

Mulcahy for some weeks understood 
very little of anything at all save that ever 
at his elbow, in camp, or at parade, stood 
two big men with sofi voices adjuring him 
to commit hari kari lest a worse thing 


Mutiny of the Mavericks 105 

should happen — to die for the honor of 
the regiment in decency among the nearest 
knives. But Mulcahy dreaded death. He 
remembered certain things that priests had 
said in his infancy, and his mother — not 
the one at New York — starting from her 
sleep with shrieks to pray for a husband’s 
soul in torment. It is well to be of a cul- 
tured intelligence, but in time of trouble the 
weak human mind returns to the creed it 
sucked in at the breast, and if that creed 
be not a pretty one, trouble follows. Also, 
the death he would have to face would be 
physically painful. Most conspirators have 
large imaginations. Mulcahy could see 
himself, as he lay on the earth in the night, 
dying by various causes. They were all 
horrible; the mother in New York was very 
far away, and the regiment, the engine that, 
once you fall in its grip, moves you forward 
whether you will or won’t, was daily com- 
ing closer to the enemy! 

They were brought to the field of Mar- 
zun-Katai, and with the Black Boneens to 
aid, they fought a fight that has never been 
set down in the newspapers. In response, 
many believe, to the fervent prayers of 
Father Dennis, the enemy not only elected 
to fight in the open, but made a beautiful 
fight, as many weeping Irish mothers knew 


io6 Mine Own People 

later. They gathered behind walls or flick- 
ered across the open in shouting masses, 
and were pot-valiant in artillery. It was 
expedient to hold a large reserve and wait 
for the psychological moment that was be- 
ing prepared by the shrieking shrapnel. 
Therefore the Mavericks lay down in open 
order on the brow of a hill to watch the 
play till their call should come. Father 
Dennis, whose place was in the rear, to 
smooth the trouble of the wounded, had 
naturally managed to make his way to the 
foremost of his boys, and lay, like a black 
porpoise, at length on the grass. To him 
crawled Mulcahy, ashen-gray, demanding 
absolution. 

“ Wait till you’re shot,” said Father Den- 
nis, sweetly. “ There’s a time for every- 
thing.” 

Dan Grady chuckled as he blew for the 
fiftieth time into the breech of his speckless 
rifle. Mulcahy groaned and buried his 
head in his arms till a stray shot spoke like 
a snipe immediately above his head, and a 
general heave and tremor rippled the line. 
Other shots followed, and a few took effect, 
as a shriek or a grunt attested. The offi- 
cers, who had been lying down with the 
men, rose and began to walk steadily up 
and down the front of their companies. 

This maneuver, executed not for publi- 
cation, but as a guarantee of good faith, to 


Mutiny of the Mavericks 107 

soothe men, demands nerve. You must 
not hurry, you must not look nervous, 
though you know that jou are a mark for 
every rifle within extreme range; and, 
above all, if you are smitten you must make 
as little noise as possible and roll inward 
through the files. It is at this hour, when 
the breeze brings the first salt whiff of the 
powder to noses rather cold at the tips, and 
the eye can quietly take in the appearance 
of each red casualty, that the strain on the 
nerves is strongest. Scotch regiments can 
endure for half a day, and abate no whit of 
their zeal at the end; English regiments 
sometimes sulk under punishment, while 
the Irish, like the French, are apt to run 
forward by ones and twos, which is just 
as bad as running back. The truly wise 
commandant of highly strung troops allows 
them in seasons of waiting to hear the 
sound of their own voices uplifted in song. 
There is a legend of an English regiment 
that lay by its arms under fire chanting 
“ Sam Hall,” to the horror of its newly 
appointed and pious colonel. The Black 
Boneens, who were suffering more than the 
Mavericks, on a hill half a mile away, began 
presently to explain to all who cared to 
listen: 

“ We’ll sound the jubilee, from the center to the 
sea, 

And Ireland shall be free, says the Shan-van* 
Voght.” 


Io8 Mine Own People 

“ Sing, boys,” said Father Dennis, softly. 
“ It looks as if we cared for their Afghan 
peas.” 

'Dan Grady raised himself to his knees 
and opened his mouth in a song imparted 
to him, as to most of his comrades, in the 
strictest confidence by Mulcahy — that 
Mulcahy then lying limp and fainting on 
the grass, the chill fear of death upon him. 

Company after company caught up the 
words which, the I. A. A. say, are to herald 
the general rising of Erin, and to breathe 
which, except to those duly appointed to 
hear, is death. Wherefore they are printed 
in this place: 

“The Saxon in heaven’s just balance is weighed, 

His doom, like Belshazzar’s, in death has been 
cast, 

And the hand of the ’venger shall never be stayed 

Till his race, faith, and speech are a dream of 
the past,” 

They were heart-filling lines, and they 
ran with a swirl; the I, A. A. are better 
served by pens than their petards. Dan 
clapped Mulcahy merrily on the back, ask- 
ing him to sing up. The officers lay down 
again. There was no need to walk any 
more. Their men were soothing them- 
selves, thunderously, thus : 

“ St Mary in heaven has written the vow 

That the land shall not rest till the heretic 
blood, 


Mutiny of the Mavericks 109 

From the babe at the breast to the hand at the 
plow. 

Has rolled to the ocean like Shannon in flood! ” 

“ I’ll speak to you after all’s over,” said 
Father Dennis, authoritatively, in Dan’s 
ear. “ What’s the use of confessing to me 
when you do this foolishness? Dan, you’ve 
been playing with fire! I’ll lay you more 
penance in a week than — ” 

“ Come along to purgatory with us, 
father, dear. The Boneens are on the 
move ; they’ll let us go now 1 ” 

The regiment rose to the blast of the 
bugle as one man; but one man there was 
who rose more swiftly than all the others, 
for half an inch of bayonet was in the fleshy 
part of his leg. 

“ You’ve got to do it,” said Dan, grimly. 
“Do it decent, anyhow;” and the roar of 
the rush drowned his words as the rear 
companies thrust forward the first, still 
singing as they swung down the slope: 

‘ From the child at the breast to the hand at the 
plow 

Has rolled to the ocean like Shannon in flood! ” 

They should have sung it in the face of 
England, not of the Afghans, whom it im- 
pressed as much as did the wild Irish yell. 

“ They came down singing,” said the un- 
official report of the enemy, borne from 
village to village next day. “ They con- 
tinued to sing, and it was written that our 


no 


Mine Own People 

men could not abide when they came. It 
is believed that there was magic in the 
aforesaid song.” 

Dan and Horse Egan kept themselves in 
the neighborhood of Mulcahy. Twice the 
man would have bolted back in the confu- 
sion. Twice he was heaved like a half- 
drowned kitten into the unpaintable inferno 
of a hotly contested charge. 

At the end, the panic excess of his fear 
drove him into madness beyond all human 
courage. His eyes staring at nothing, his 
mouth open and frothing, and breathing 
as one in a cold bath, he went forward de- 
mented, while Dan toiled after him. The 
charge was checked at a high mud wall. 
It was Mulcahy that scrambled up tooth 
and nail and heaved down among the bayo- 
nets the amazed Afghan who barred his 
way. It was Mulcahy, keeping to the 
straight line of the rabid dog, led a collec- 
tion of ardent souls at a newly unmasked 
battery, and flung himself on the muzzle 
of a gun as his companions danced among 
the gunners. It was Mulcahy who ran 
wildly on from that battery into the open 
plain where the enemy were retiring in sul- 
len groups. His hands were empty, he 
had lost helmet and belt, and he was bleed- 
ing from a wound in the neck. Dan and 
Horse Egan, panting and distressed, had 
thrown themselves down on the ground by 


Mutiny of the Mavericks 1 1 1 

the captured guns, when they noticed Mul- 
cahy’s flight. 

“ Mad,” said Horse Egan, critically. 
“ Mad with feari He’s going straight to 
his death, an’ shouting’s no use.” 

“Let him go. Watch now! If we fire 
we’II hit him maybe.” 

The last of a hurrying crowd of Afghans 
turned at the noise of shod feet behind him, 
and shifted his knife ready to hand. This, 
he saw, was no time to take prisoners. 
Mulcahy ran on, sobbing, and the straight- 
held blade went home through the defense- 
less breast, and the body pitched forward 
almost before a shot from Dan’s rifle 
brought down the slayer and still further 
hurried the Afghan retreat. The two 
Irishmen went out to bring in their dead. 

“ He was given the point, and that was 
an easy death,” said Horse Egan, viewing 
the corpse. “ But would you ha’ shot him, 
Danny, if he had lived?” 

“ He didn’t live, so there’s no sayin’. 
But I doubt I wud have, bekase of the fun 
he gave us — let alone the beer. Hike up 
his legs. Horse, and we’ll bring him in. 
Perhaps ’tis better this way.” 

They bore the poor limp body to the 
mass of the regiment, lolling open-mouthed 
on their rifles; and there was a general 
snigger when one of the younger subal- 
terns said : “ That was a good man ! ” 


1 1 2 Mine Own People 

“ Phewl ” said Horse Egan when a bur- 
ial party had taken over the burden. “ I’m 
powerful dhry, and this reminds me, there’ll 
be no more beer at all.” 

” Fwhy not? ” said Dan, with a twinkle 
in his eye as he stretched himself for rest. 
“ Are we not conspirin’ all we can, an’ 
while we conspire are we not entitled to 
free dhrinks? Sure his ould mother in 
New York would not let her son’s com- 
rades perish of drouth — if she can be 
reached at the end of a letter.” 

“ You’re a janius,” said Horse Egan. 
“ O’ coorse she will not. I wish this crool 
war was over, an’ we’d get back to can- 
teen. Faith, the commander-in-chief ought 
to be hanged on his own little sword-belt 
for makin’ us work on wather.” 

' The Mavericks were generally of Horse 
Egan’s opinion. So they made haste to get 
their work done as soon as possible, and 
their industry was rewarded by unexpected 
peace. “We can fight the sons of Adam,” 
said the tribesmen, “ but we can not 
fight the sons of Eblis, and this regiment 
never stays still in one place. Let us 
therefore come in.” They came in, and 
“ this regiment ” withdrew to conspire un- 
der the leadership of Dan Grady. 

Excellent as a subordinate, Dan failed 
altogether as a chief-in-command — possi- 
bly because he was too much swayed by the 


Mutiny of the Mavericks 1 1 3 

advice of the only man in the regiment who 
could perpetrate more than one kind of 
handwriting. The same mail that bore to 
Mulcahy’s mother in New York a letter 
from the colonel, telling her how valiantly 
her son had fought for the queen, and how 
assuredly he would have been recom- 
mended for the Victoria Cross had he sur- 
vived, carried a communication signed, I 
grieve to say, by that same colonel and all 
the officers of the regiment, explaining 
their willingness to do “ anything which 
is contrary to the regulations and all kinds 
of revolutions ” if only a little money could 
be forwarded to cover incidental expenses. 
Daniel Grady, Esquire, would receive 
funds, vice Mulcahy, who “ was unwell at 
this present time of writing.” 

Both letters were forwarded from New 
York to Tehema Street, San Francisco, 
with marginal comments as brief as they 
were bitter. The Third Three read and 
looked at each other. Then the Second 
Conspirator — he who believed in “ joining 
hands with the practical branches ” — began 
to laugh, and on recovering his gravity, 
said: “ Gentlemen, I consider this will be 
a lesson to us. “ We’re left again. Those 
cursed Irish have let us down. I knew 
they would, but ” — here he laughed afresh 
— “ I’d give considerable to know what was 
at the back of it all.” 


1 14 Mine Own People 

His curiosity would have been satisfied 
had he seen Dan Grady, discredited regi- 
mental conspirator, trying to explain to his 
thirsty comrades in India the non-arrival 
of funds from New York. 


AT THE END OF THE 
PASSAGE 


Four men, theoretically entitled to “ life, 
liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” sat 
at a table playing whist. The thermome- 
ter marked — for them — one hundred and 
one degrees of heat. The room was dark- 
ened till it was only just possible to distin- 
guish the pips of the cards and the very 
white faces of the players. A tattered, rot- 
ten punkah of whitewashed calico was pud- 
dling the hot air and whining dolefully at 
each stroke. Outside lay gloom of a No- 
vember day in London. There was nei- 
ther sky, sun, nor horizon — nothing but 
a brown-purple haze of heat. It was as 
though the earth were dying of apoplexy. 

From time to time clouds of tawny dust 
rose from the ground without wind or 
warning, flung themselves table-clothwise 
among the tops of the parched trees, and 
came down again. Then a whirling dust- 
devil would scutter across the plain for a 
couple of miles, break and fall outward. 


1 1 6 Mine Own People 

though there was nothing to check its 
flight save.a long low line of piled railway- 
sleepers white with the dust, a cluster of 
huts made of mud, condemned rails and 
canvas, and the one squat four-roomed bun- 
galow that belonged to the assistant engin- 
eer in charge of a section of the Gandhari 
State line then under construction. 

The four men, stripped to the thinnest 
of sleeping-suits, played whist crossly, with 
wranglings as to leads and returns. It was 
not the best kind of whist, but they had 
taken some trouble to arrive at it. Mot- 
tram, of the India Survey, had ridden thirty 
and railed one hundred miles from his 
lonely post in the desert since the previous 
night; Lowndes, of the Civil Service, on 
special duty in the political department, had 
come as far to escape for an instant the 
miserable intrigues of an impoverished na- 
tive state whose king alternately fawned 
and blustered for more money from the 
pitiful revenues contributed by hard-wrung 
peasants and despairing camel-breeders ; 
Spurstow, the doctor of the line, had left a 
cholera-stricken camp of coolies to look 
after itself for forty-eight hours while he 
associated with white men once more. 
Hummil, the assistant engineer, was the 
host. He stood fast, and received his 
friends thus every Sunday if they could 
come in. When one of them failed to ap- 


At the End of the Passage 1 1 7 

pear, he would send a telegram to his last 
address, in order that he might know 
whether the defaulter was dead or alive. 
There be very many places in the East 
where it is not good or kind to let your 
acquaintances drop out of sight even for 
one short week. 

The players were not conscious of any 
special regard for each other. They squab- 
bled whenever they met; but they ardently 
desired to meet, as men without water de- 
sire to drink. They were lonely folk who 
understood the dread meaning of loneli- 
ness. They were all under thirty years of 
age — which is too soon for any man to 
possess that knowledge. 

“ Pilsener,” said Spurstow, after the sec- 
ond rubber, mopping his forehead. 

“ Beer’s out. I’m sorry to say, and there’s 
hardly enough soda-water for to-night,” 
said Hummil. 

“ What filthy bad management! ” snarled 
Spurstow. 

“Can’t help it. I’ve written and wired; 
but the trains don’t come through regu- 
larly yet. Last week the ice ran out — as 
Lowndes knows.” 

“ Glad I didn’t come. I could ha’ sent 
you some if I had known, though. Phew! 
it’s too hot to go on playing bumblepuppy,” 

This was a savage growl at Lowndes, 


ii8 Mine Own People 

who only laughed. He was a hardened 
offender. 

Mottram rose from the table and looked 
out of a chink in the shutters. 

“ What a sweet day! ” said he. 

The company yawned unanimously and 
betook themselves to an aimless investiga- 
tion of all Hummil’s possessions — guns, 
tattered novels, saddlery, spurs, and the 
like. They had fingered them a score of 
times before, but there was really nothing 
else to do. 

“ Got anything fresh? ” said Lowndes. 

“ Last week’s ‘ Gazette of India,’ and a 
cutting from a home paper. My father 
sent it out. It’s rather amusing.” 

“ One of those vestrymen that call ’em- 
selves M. P.’s again, is it? ” said Spurstow, 
who read his newspapers when he could 
get them. 

“ Yes. Listen to this. It’s to your ad- 
dress, Lowndes. The man was making a 
speech to his constituents, and he piled it 
on. Here’s a sample; ‘And I assert un- 
hesitatingly that the Civil Service in India 
is the preserve — the pet preserve — of the 
aristocracy of England. What does the 
democracy — what do the masses — get 
from that country, which we have step by 
step fraudulently annexed? I answer, noth- 
ing whatever. It is farmed, with a single 
eye to their own interests, by the scions of 


At the End of the Passage 1 1 9 

tlie aristocracy. They take good care to 
maintain their lavish scale of incomes, to 
avoid or stifle any inquiries into the nature 
and conduct of their administration, while 
they themselves force the unhappy peasant 
to pay with the sweat of his brow for all 
the luxuries in which they are lapped.’ ” 
Hummil waved the cutting above his head. 
“ ’Ear! ’ear! ” said his audience. 

Then Lowndes, meditatively: “ I’d give 

— I’d give three months’ pay to have that 
gentleman spend one month with me and 
see how the free and independent native 
prince works things. Old Timbersides ” 

— this was his flippant title for an honored 
and decorated prince — “ has been wearing 
my life out this week past for money. By 
Jove! his latest performance w'as to send 
me one of his women as a bribe ! ” 

“ Good for you. Did you accept it? ” 
said Mottram. 

“ No. I rather wish I had, now. She 
was a pretty little person, and she yarned 
away to me about the horrible destitution 
among the king’s women-folk. The dar- 
lings haven’t had any new clothes for nearly 
a month, and the old man wants to buy a 
new drag from Calcutta — solid silver rail- 
ings and silver lamps, and trifles of that 
kind. I’ve tried to make him understand 
that he has played the deuce with the reve- 


120 Mine Own People 

nues for the last twenty years, and must go 
slow. He can’t see it.” 

“ But he has the ancestral treasure-vault 
to draw on. There must be three millions 
at least in jewels and coin under his pal- 
ace,” said Hummil. 

“ Catch a native king disturbing the fam- 
ily treasure! The priests forbid it, except 
as the last resort. Old Timbersides has 
added something like a quarter of a mil- 
lion to the deposit in his reign.” 

“ Where the mischief does it all come 
from?” said Mottram. 

“ The country. The state of the people 
is enough to make you sick. I’ve known 
the tax-men wait by a milch-camel till the 
foal was born, and then hurry off the 
mother for arrears. And what can I do? 
I can’t get the court clerks to give me any 
accounts; I can’t raise anything more than 
a fat smile from the commander-in-chief 
when I find out the troops are three months 
in arrears; and old Timbersides begins to 
weep when I speak to him. He has taken 
to the king’s peg heavily — liqueur brandy 
for whiskey and Heidsieck for soda-water.” 

“ That’s what the Rao of Jubela took to. 
Even a native can’t last long at that,” said 
Spurstow. “ He’ll go out.” 

“ And a good thing, too. Then I sup- 
pose we’ll have a council of regency, and a 
tutor for the young prince, and hand him 


At the End of the Passage 1 2 1 

back his kingdom with ten years’ accumu- 
lations.” 

“ Whereupon that young prince, having 
been taught all the vices of the English, 
will play ducks and drakes with the money, 
and undo ten years’ work in eighteen 
months. I’ve seen that business before,” 
said Spurstow. “ I should tackle the king 
with a light hand, if I were you, Lowndes. 
They’ll hate you quite enough under any 
circumstances.” 

“ That’s all very well. The man who 
looks on can talk about the light hand; but 
you can’t clean a pig-sty with a pen dipped 
in rosewater. I know my risks; but noth- 
ing has happened yet. My servant’s an old 
Pathan, and he cooks for me. They are 
hardly likely to bribe him, and I don’t ac- 
cept food from my true friends, as they 
call themselves. (Dh, but it’s weary work! 
I’d sooner be with you, Spurstow. There’s 
shooting near your camp.” 

“ Would you? I don’t think it. About 
fifteen deaths a day don’t incite a man .to 
shoot anything but himself. And the 
worst of it is that the poor devils look at 
you as though you ought to save them. 
Lord knows, I’ve tried everything. My 
last attempt was empirical, but it pulled 
an old man through. He was brought ^to 
me apparently past hope, and I gave him 


122 Mine Own People 

gin and Worcester sauce with cayenne. It 
cured him; but I don’t recommend it.” 

“ How do the cases run generally? ” said 
Hummil. 

“ Very simply indeed. Chlorodyne, 
opium pill, chlorodyne, collapse, nitre, 
bricks to the feet, and then — the burning- 
ghat. The last seems to be the only thing 
that stops the trouble. It’s black cholera, 
you know. Poor devils! But, I will say, 
little Bunsee Lai, my apothecary, works 
like a demon. I’ve recommended him for 
promotion if he comes through it all alive.” 

“ And what are your chances, old man? ” 
said Mottram. 

“ Don’t know; don’t care much; but I’ve 
sent the letter in. What are you doing 
with yourself generally? ” 

“ Sitting under a table in the tent and 
spitting on the sextant to keep it cool,” said 
the man of the survey. “ Washing my eyes 
to avoid ophthalmia, which I shall cer- 
tainly get, and trying to make a sub-sur- 
veyor understand that an error of five 
degrees in an angle isn’t quite so small as it 
looks. I’m altogether alone, y’ know, and 
shall be till the end of the hot weather.” 

“ Hummil’s the lucky man,” said 
Lowndes, flinging himself into a long chair. 
“ He has an actual roof — torn as to the 
ceiling-cloth, but still a roof — over his 
head. He sees one train daily. He can 


At the End of the Passage 123 

get beer and soda-water, and ice it when 
God is good. He has books, pictures ” — r 
they were torn from the “ Graphic ” — “ and 
the society of the excellent sub-contractor 
Jevins, besides the pleasure of receiving us 
weekly.” 

Hummil smiled grimly. “ Yes, I’m the 
lucky man, I suppose. Jevins is luckier.” 

“ How? Not — ” 

“ Yes. Went out. Last Monday.” 

“ Ap sef ” said Spurstow, quickly, hint- 
ing the suspicion that was in everybody’s 
mind. There was no cholera near Hum- 
mil’s section. Even fever gives a man at 
least a week’s grace, and sudden death gen- 
erally implied self-slaughter. 

“ I judge no man this weather,” said 
Hummil. “ He had a touch of the sun, 
I fancy; for last week, after you fellows 
had left, he came into the 'veranda, and told 
me that he was going home to see his wife, 
in Market Street, Liverpool, that evening. 
I got the apothecary in to look at hirn, and 
we tried to make him lie down. After an 
hour or two he rubbed his eyes and sgjd 
he believed he had had a fit — hoped he 
hadn’t said anything rude. Jevins had a 
great idea of bettering himself socially. 
He was very like Chucks in his language.” 

“ Well?” 

“ Then he went to his own bungalow and 
began cleaning a rifle. He told the ser- 


124 Mine Own People 

vant that he was going after buck in the 
morning. Naturally he fumbled with the 
trigger, and shot himself through the head 
accidentally. The apothecary sent in a re- 
port to my chief, and Jevins is buried some- 
where out there. Td have wired to you, 
Spurstow, if you could have done 
anything.” 

“ You’re a queer chap,” said Mottram. 
“ If you killed the man yourself you 
couldn’t have been more quiet about the 
business.” 

“ Good Lord! what does it matter? ” said 
Hummil, calmly. “ I’ve got to do a lot of 
his overseeing work in addition to my own. 
I’m the only person that suffers. Jevins 
is out of it — by pure accident, of course, 
but out of it. The apothecary was going 
to write a long screed on suicide. Trust 
a babu to drivel when he gets the chance.” 

“ Why didn’t you let it go in as sui- 
cide? ” said Lowndes. 

“ No direct proof. A man hasn’t many 
privileges in this country, but he might at 
least be allowed to mishandle his own rifle. 
Besides, some day I may need a man to 
smother up an accident to myself. Live 
and let live. Die and let die.” 

“You take a pill,” said Spurstow, who 
had been watching Hummil’s white face 
narrowly. “ Take a pill, and don’t be an 
ass. That sort of talk is skittles. Anyhow, 


At the End of the Passage 125 

suicide is shirking your work. If I was a 
Job ten times over, I should be so inter- 
ested in what was going to happen next 
that I’d stay on and watch.” 

“ Ah ! I’ve lost that curiosity,” said 
Hummil. 

“ Liver out of order? ” said Lowndes, 
feelingly. 

“ No. Can’t sleep. That’s worse.” 

“ By Jove, it is! ” said Mottram. “ I’m 
that way every now and then, and the fit 
has to wear itself out. What do you take 
for it?” 

“ Nothing. What’s the use? I haven’t 
had ten minutes’ sleep since Friday 
morning.” 

“ Poor chap I Spurstow, you ought to 
attend to this,” said Mottram. “ Now you 
mention it, your eyes are rather gummy 
and swollen.” , 

Spurstow, still watching Hummil, 
laughed lightly. “ I’ll patch him up later 
on. Is it too hot, do you think, to go for' 
a ride? ” - 

“Where to?” said Lowndes, wearily., 
“We shall have to go away at eight, and 
there’ll be riding enough for us then. I 
hate a horse, when I have to use him as a 
necessity. Oh, heavens! what is there to 
do?” 

“ Begin whist again, at chick points ” (a 
“ chick ” is supposed to be eight shillings), 


126 Mine Own People 

“ and a gold mohur on the rub,” said Spur- 
stow, promptly. 

“ Poker. A month’s pay all round for 
the pool — no limit — and fifty-rupee 
raises. Somebody would be broken before 
we got up,” said Lowndes. 

“ Can’t say that it would give me any 
pleasure to break any man in this com- 
pany,” said Mottram. “ There isn’t enough 
excitement in it, and it’s foolish.” He 
crossed over to the worn and battered little 
camp-piano — wreckage of a married house- 
hold that had once held the bungalow — 
and opened the case. 

“ It’s used up long ago,” said Hummil. 
“ The servants have picked it to pieces.” 

The piano was indeed hopelessly out of 
order, but Mottram managed to bring the 
rebellious notes into a sort of agreement, 
and there rose from the ragged key-board 
something that might once have been the 
ghost of a popular music-hall song. The 
men in the long chairs turned with evident 
interest as Mottram banged the more 
lustily. 

“That’s good!” said Lowndes. “By 
Jove! the last time I heard that song was 
in ’79, or thereabouts, just before I came 
out.” 

“ Ah ! ” said Spurstow, with pride, “ I was 
home in ’80.” And he mentioned a song 
of the streets popular at that date. 


At the End of the Passage 127 

Mottram executed it indifferently well. 
Lowndes criticised, and volunteered emen- 
dations. Mottram dashed into another 
ditty, not of the music-hall character, and 
made as if to rise. 

“ Sit down,” said Hummil. “ I didn’t 
know that you had any music in your com- 
position. Go on playing until you can’t 
think of anything more. I’ll have that 
piano tuned up before you come again. 
Play something festive.” 

Very simple indeed were the tunes to 
which Mottram’s art and the limitations 
of the piano could give effect, but the men 
listened with pleasure, and in the pauses 
talked all together of what they had seen 
or heard when they were last at home. A 
dense dust-storm sprung up outside and 
swept roaring over the house, enveloping 
it in the choking darkness of midnight, but 
Mottram continued unheeding, and the 
crazy tinkle reached the ears of the listen- 
ers above the flapping of the tattered ceil- 
ing-cloth. 

In the silence after the storm he glided 
from the more directly personal songs of 
Scotland, half humming them as he played, 
into the “ Evening Hymn.” 

“ Sunday,” said he nodding his head. 

“ Go on. Don’t apologize for it,” said 
Spurstow. 

Hummil laughed long and riotously. 


128 Mine Own People 

“ Play it, by all means. You’re full of sur- 
prises to-day. I didn’t know you had such 
a gift of finished sarcasm. How does that 
thing go?” 

Mottram took up the tune. 

“ Too slow by half. You miss the note 
of gratitude,” said Hummil. “ It ought to 
go to the ‘ Grasshopper Polka ’ — this way.” 
And he chanted, prestissimo: 

“ Glory to Thee, my God, this night, 

For all the blessings of the light.’ 

That shows we really feel our blessings. 
How does it go on? — 

“ * If in the night I sleepless lie. 

My soul with sacred thoughts supply; 

May no ill dreams disturb my rest,’ — 

Quicker, Mottram! — 

‘ Or powers of darkness me molest ! ’ ” 

“ Bah! what an old hypocrite you are.” 

“ Don’t be an ass,” said Lowndes. “ You 
are at full liberty to make fun of anything 
else you like, but leave that hymn alone. 
It’s associated in my mind with the most 

sacred recollections ” 

“ Summer evenings in the country — 
stained-glass window — light going out, 
and you and she jamming your heads to- 
gether over one hymn-book,” said Mot- 
tram. 

“Yes, and a fat old cockchafer hitting 
you in the eye when you walked home. 
Smell of hay, and a moon as big as a band- 


At the End of the Passage 1 29 

box sitting on the top of a haycock ; bats — 
roses — milk and midges,” said Lowndes. 

“ Also mothers. I can just recollect my 
mother singing me to sleep with that when 
I was a little chap,” said Spurstow. 

The darkness had fallen on the room. 
They could hear Hummil squirming in his 
chair. 

“ Consequently,” said he, testily, “ you 
sing it when you are seven fathoms deep 
in hell! It’s an insult to the intelligence of 
the Deity to pretend we’re anything but 
tortured rebels.” 

“Take two pills,” said Spurstow: “that’s 
tortured liver.” 

“The usually placid Hummil is in a vile 
bad temper. I’m sorry for the coolies to- 
morrow,” said Lowndes, as the servants 
brought in the lights and prepared the table 
for dinner. 

As they were settling into their places 
about the miserable goat-chops, the curried 
eggs, and the smoked tapioca pudding, 
Spurstow took occasion to whisper to Mot- 
tram: “ Well done, David! ” 

“ Look after Saul, then,” was the reply. 

“ What are you two whispering about? ” 
said Hummil, suspiciously. 

“ Only saying that you are a d d poor 

host. This fowl can’t be cut,” returned 
Spurstow, with a sweet smile. “ Call this 
a dinner? ” 


130 Mine Own People 

“ I can’t help it. You don’t expect a ban- 
quet, do you?” 

Throughout that meal Hummil con- 
trived laboriously to insult directly and 
pointedly all his guests in succession, and 
at each insult Spurstow kicked the ag- 
grieved person under the table, but he 
dared not exchange a glance of intelligence 
with either of them. Hummil’s face was 
white and pinched, while his eyes were un- 
naturally large. No man dreamed for a 
moment of resenting his savage personali- 
ties, but as soon as the meal was over they 
made haste to get away. 

“ Don’t go. You’re just getting amus- 
ing, you fellows. I hope I haven’t said 
anything that annoyed you. You’re such 
touchy devils.” Then, changing the note 
into one of almost abject entreaty: “ I say, 
you surely aren’t going?” 

“ Where I dines, I sleeps, in the language 
of the blessed Jorrocks,” said Spurstow. 
“ I want to have a look at your coolies to- 
morrow, if you don’t mind. You can give 
me a place to lie down in, I suppose?” 

The others pleaded the urgency of their 
several employs next day, and, saddling up, 
departed together, Hummil begging them 
to come next Sunday. As they jogged off 
together, Lowndes unbosomed himself to 
Mottram: “. . . And I never felt so 

like kicking a man at his own table in my 


At the End of the Passage i 3 1 

life. Said I cheated at whist, and reminded 
me I was in debt! Told you you were as 
good as a liar to your face! You aren’t 
half indignant enough over it.” 

“Not I,” said Mottram. “Poor devil! 
Did you ever know old Hummy behave 
like that before? Did you ever know him 
go within a hundred miles of it? ” 

“ That’s no excuse. Spurstow was hack- 
ing my shin all the time, so I kept a hand 
on myself. Else I should have ” 

“ No, you wouldn’t. You’d have done 
as Hummy did about Jevins: judge no man 
this weather. By Jove! the buckle of my 
bridle is hot in my hand! Trot out a bit, 
and mind the rat-holes.” 

Ten minutes’ trotting jerked out of 
Lowndes one very sage remark when he 
pulled up, sweating from every pore: 

“ Good thing Spurstow’s with him to- 
night.” 

“Ye-es. Good man, Spurstow. Our 
roads turn here. See you again next Sun- 
day, if the sun doesn’t bowl me over.” 

“ S’pose so, unless old Timbersides’ 
finance minister manages to dress some of 
my food. Good-night, and — God bless 
you ! ” 

“What’s wrong now?” 

“ Oh, nothing.” Lowndes gathered up 
his whip, and, as he flicked Mottram’s mare 
on the flank, added: “ You’re a good little 


132 Mine Own People 

chap — that’s all.” And the mare bolted 
half a mile across the sand on the word. 

In the assistant engineer’s bungalow 
Spurstow and Hummil smoked the pipe of 
silence together, each narrowly watching 
the other. The capacity of a bachelor’s es- 
tablishment is as elastic as its arrangements 
are simple. A servant cleared away the 
dining-room table, brought in a couple of 
rude native bedsteads made of tape strung 
on a light wood frame, flung a square of 
cool Calcutta matting over each, set them 
side by side, pinned two towels to the pun- 
kah so that their fringes should just sweep 
clear of each sleeper’s nose and mouth, and 
announced that the couches were ready. 

The men flung themselves down, adjur- 
ing the punkah-coolies by all the powers 
of Eblis to pull. Every door and window 
was shut, for the outside air was that of an 
oven. The atmosphere within was only 
104°, as the thermometer attested, and 
heavy with the foul smell of badly trimmed 
kerosene lamps; and this stench, combined 
with that of native tobacco, baked brick, 
and dried earth, sends the heart of many 
a strong man down to his boots, for it is 
the smell of the great Indian Empire when 
she turns herself for six months into a 
house of torment. Spurstow packed his 
pillows craftily, so that he reclined rather 
than lay, his head at a safe elevation above 


At the End of the Passage 133 

his feet. It is not good to sleep on a low 
pillow in the hot weather if you happen to 
be of thick-necked build, for you may pass 
with lively snores and gurglings from nat- 
ural sleep into the deep slumber of heat- 
apoplexy. 

“ Pack your pillows,” said the doctor, 
sharply, as he saw Hummil preparing to 
lie down at full length. 

The night-light was trimmed; the 
shadow of the punkah wavered across the 
room, and the Hick of the punkah-towel and 
the soft whine of the rope through the 
wall-hole followed it. Then the punkah 
flagged, almost ceased. The sweat poured 
from Spurstow’s brow. Should he go out 
and harangue the coolie? It started for- 
ward again with a savage jerk, and a pin 
came out of the towels. When this was 
replaced, a tom-tom in the coolie lines be- 
gan to beat with the steady throb of a 
swollen artery inside some brain-fevered 
skull. Spurstow turned on his side and 
swore gently. There was no movement on 
Hummil’s part. The man had composed 
himself as rigidly as a corpse, his hands 
clinched at his sides. The respiration was 
too hurried for any suspicion of sleep. 
Spurstow looked at the set face. The jaws 
were clinched, and there was a pucker 
round the quivering eyelids. 

“ He’s holding himself as tightly as ever 


134 Mine Own People 

he can,” thought Spurstow. “ What a 
sham it is! and what in the world is the 
matter with him? — Hummil! ” 

“ Yes.” 

“ Can’t you get to sleep? ” 

“ No.” 

“Head hot? Throat feeling bulgy? or 
how? ” 

“ Neither, thanks. I don’t sleep much, 
you know.” 

“ Feel pretty bad?” 

“ Pretty bad, thanks. There is a tom- 
tom outside, isn’t there? I thought it was 
my head at first. Oh, Spurstow, for pity’s 
sake, give me something that will put me 
asleep — sound sleep — if it’s only for six 
hours! ” He sprung up. “ I haven’t been 
able to sleep naturally for days, and I can’t 
stand it! — I can’t stand it!” 

“ Poor old chap! ” 

“ That’s no use. Give me something to 
make me sleep. I tell you I’m nearly mad. 
I don’t know what I say half my time. For 
three weeks I’ve had to think and spell out 
every word that has come through my lips 
before I dared say it. I had to get my 
sentences out down to the last word, for 
fear of talking drivel if I didn’t. Isn’t that 
enough to drive a man mad? I can’t see 
things correctly now, and I’ve lost my 
sense of touch. Make me sleep. Oh, 
Spurstow, for the love of God, make me 


At the End of the Passage 135 

sleep sound. It isn’t enough merely to let 
me dream. Let me sleep ! ” 

“ All right, old man, all right. Go slow. 
You aren’t half as bad as you think.” The 
flood-gates of reserve once broken, Hum- 
mil was clinging to him like a frightened 
child. 

“You’re pinching my arm to pieces.” 

“ I’ll break your neck if you don’t do 
something for me. No, I didn’t mean that. 
Don’t be angry, old fellow.” He wiped 
the sweat off himself as he fought to regain 
composure. “As a matter of fact, I’m a 
bit restless and off my oats, and perhaps 
you could recommend some sort of sleep- 
ing-mixture — bromide of potassium.” 

“Bromide of skittles! Why didn’t you 
‘ tell me this before? Let go of my arm, and 
I’ll see if there’s anything in my cigarette- 
case to suit your complaint.” He hunted 
among his day-clothes, turned up the 
lamp, opened a little silver cigarette-case, 
and advanced on the expectant Hummil 
with the daintiest of fairy squirts. 

“ The last appeal of civilization,” said he, 

“ and a thing I hate to use. Hold out your 
arm. Well, your sleeplessness hasn’t 
ruined your muscle; and what a thick hide 
it is! Might as well inject a buffalo sub- 
cutaneously. Now in a few minutes the 
morphia will begin working. Lie down 
and wait.” 


136 Mine Own People 

A smile of unalloyed and idiotic delight 
began to creep over Hummil’s face. “ I 
think,” he whispered — “ I think I’m going 
off now. Gad! it’s positively heavenly! 
Spurstow, you must give me that case to 
keep; you — ” The voice ceased as the 
head fell back. 

“Not for a good deal,” said Spurstow to 
the unconscious form. “ And now, my 
friend, sleeplessness of your kind being 
very apt to relax the moral fiber in little 
matters of life and death. I’ll just take the 
liberty of spiking your guns.” 

He paddled into Hummil’s saddle-room 
in his bare feet, and uncased a twelve-bore, 
an express, and a revolver. Of the first he 
unscrewed the nipples and hid them in the 
bottom of a saddlery-case; of the second he 
abstracted the lever, placing it behind a big 
wardrobe. The third he merely opened, 
and knocked the doll-head bolt of the grip 
up with the heel of a riding-boot. 

“That’s settled,” he said, as he shook 
the sweat off his hands. “ These little pre- 
cautions will at least give you time to turn. 
You have too much sympathy with gun- 
room accidents.” 

And as he rose from his knees, the thick 
muffled voice of Hummil cried in the door- 
way: “You fool!” 

Such tones they use who speak in the 


At the End of the Passage 137 

lucid intervals of delirium to their friends 
a little before they die. 

Spurstow jumped with sheer fright. 
Hummil stood in the doorway, rocking 
with helpless laughter. 

“ That was awf’ly good of you, I’m sure,” 
he said, very slowly, feeling for his words. 
“ I don’t intend to go out by my own hand 
at present. I say, Spurstow, that stuff 
won’t work. What shall 'I do? What 
shall I do? ” And panic terror stood in his 
eyes. 

“ Lie down and give it a chance. Lie 
down at once.” 

“ I daren’t. It will only take me half- 
way again, and I sha’n’t be able to get away 
this time. Do you know it was all I could 
do to come out just now? Generally I am 
as quick as lightning; but you have clogged 
my feet. I was nearly caught.” 

“ Oh, yes, I understand. Go and lie 
down.” 

“No, it isn’t delirium; but it was an 
awfully mean trick to play on me. Do you 
know I might have died? ” 

As a sponge rubs a slate clean, so some 
power unknown to Spurstow had wiped out 
of Hummil’s face all that stamped it for the 
face of a man, and he stood at the door- 
way in the expression of his lost innocence. 
He had slept back into terrified childhood. 

“Is he going to die on the spot?” 


138 Mine Own People 

thought Spurstow. Then, aloud : “ All 
right, my son. Come back to bed, and tell 
me all about it. You couldn’t sleep; but 
what was all the rest of the nonsense? ” 

“ A place — a place down there,” said 
Hummil, with simple sincerity. The drug 
was acting on him by waves^ and he was 
flung from the fear of a strong man to the 
fright of a child as his nerves gathered 
sense or were dulled. 

“ Good God ! I’ve been afraid of it for 
months past, Spurstow. It has made every 
night hell to me; and yet I’m not conscious 
of having done anything wrong.” 

“ Be still, and I’ll give you another dose. 
We’ll stop your nightmares, you unutter- 
able idiot ! ” 

“ Yes, but you must give me so much 
that I can’t get away. You must make 
me quite sleepy — not just a little sleepy. 
It’s so hard to run then.” 

“ I know it; I know it. I’ve felt it my- 
self. The symptoms are exactly as you 
describe.” 

“ Oh don’t laugh at me, confound you ! 
Before this awful sleeplessness came to me, 
I’ve tried to rest on my elbow and put a 
spur in the bed to sting me when I fell 
back. Look!” 

“By Jove! the man has been roweled 
like a horse! Ridden by the nightmare 
with a vengeance! And we all thought 


At the End of the Passage 139 

him sensible enough. Heaven send us 
understanding! You like to talk, don’t 
you old man?” 

“ Yes, sometimes. Not when I’m fright- 
ened. Then I want to run. Don’t you?” 

“ Always. Before I give you your sec- 
ond dose, try to tell me exactly what your 
trouble is.” 

Hummil spoke in broken whispers for 
nearly ten minutes, while Spurstow looked 
into the pupils of his eyes and passed his 
hand before them once or twice. 

At the end of the narrative the silver 
cigarette-case was produced, and the last 
words that Hummil said as he fell back for 
the second time were: “ Put me quite to 
sleep; for if I’m caught, I die — I die! ” 

“ Yes, yes; we all do that sooner or later, 
thank Heaven! who has set a term to our 
miseries,” said Spurstow, settling the cush- 
ions under the head. “ It occurs to me 
that unless I drink something, I shall go 
out before my time. I’ve stopped sweat- 
ing, and I wear a seventeen-inch collar.” 
And he brewed himself scalding hot tea^ 
which is an excellent remedy against heat- 
apoplexy if you take three or four cups of 
it in time. Then he watched the sleeper. 

“ A blind face that cries and can’t wipe 
its eyes. H’m! Decidedly, Hummil ought 
to go on .leave as soon as possible; and, 
sane or otherwise, he undoubtedly did 


140 Mine Own People 

rowel himself most cruelly. Well, Heaven 
send us understanding! ” 

At midday Hummil rose, with an evil 
taste in his mouth, but an unclouded eye 
and a joyful heart. 

“ I was pretty bad last night, wasn’t I? ” 
said he. 

“I have seen healthier men. You must 
have had a touch of the sun. Look here: 
if I write you a swingeing medical certifi- 
cate, will you apply for leave on the spot? ” 

“ No.” 

“Why not? You want it.” 

“ Yes, but I can hold on till the weather’s 
a little cooler.” 

“ Why should you, if you can get relieved 
on the spot? ” 

“ Burkett is the only man who could be 
sent; and he’s a born fool.” 

“ Oh, never mind about the line. You 
aren’t so important as all that. Wire for 
leave, if necessary.” 

Hummil looked very uncomfortable. 

“ I can hold on till the rains,” he said, 
evasively. 

“ You can’t. Wire to head-quarters for 
Burkett.” 

“ I won’t. If you want to know why, 
particularly, Burkett is married, and his 
wife’s just had a kid, and she’s up at Simla, 
in the cool, and Burkett has a very nice 
billet that takes him into Simla from Sat- 


At the End of the Passage 141 

iirday to Monday. That little woman isn’t 
at all well. If Burkett was transferred she’d 
try to follow him. If she left the baby be- 
hind she’d fret herself to death. If she 
came — and Burkett’s one of those selfish 
little beasts who are always talking about 
a wife’s place being with her husband — 
she’d die. It’s murder to bring a woman 
here just now. Burkett has got the phy- 
sique of a rat. If he came here he’d go 
out; and I know she hasn’t any money, and 
I am pretty sure she’d go out too. I’m 
salted in a sort of way, and I’m not mar- 
ried. Wait till the rains, and then Burkett 
can get thin down here. It’ll do him heaps 
of good.” 

” Do you mean to say that you intend 
to face — what you have faced, for the next 
fifty-six nights?” 

” Oh, it won’t be so bad, now you’ve 
shown me a way out of it. I can always 
wire to you. Besides, now I’ve once got 
into the way of sleeping, it’ll be all right. 
Anyhow, I shan’t put in for leave. That’s 
the long and the short of it.” 

“ My great Scott! I thought all that sort 
of thing was dead and done with.” 

“Bosh! You’d do the same yourself. I 
feel a new man, thanks to that cigarette- 
case. You’re going over to camp now, 
aren’t you? ” 


142 Mine Own People 

“Yes; but I’ll try to look you up every 
other day, if I can.” 

“ I’m not bad enough for that. I don’t 
want you to bother. Give the coolies gin 
and ketchup.” 

“ Then you feel all right? ” 

“ Fit to fight for my life, but not to stand 
out in the sun talking to you. Go along, 
old man, and bless you ! ” 

Hummil turned on his heel to face the 
echoing desolation of his bungalow, and 
the first thing he saw standing in the 
veranda was the figure of himself. He had 
met a similar apparition once before, when 
he was suffering from overwork and the 
strain of the hot weather. 

“ This is bad — already,” he said, rub- 
bing his eyes. “ If the thing slides away 
from me all in one piece, like a ghost, I 
shall know it is only my eyes and stomach 
that are out of order. If it walks, I shall 
know that my head is going.” 

He walked to the figure, which naturally 
kept at an unvarying distance from him, 
as is the use of all specters that are born 
of overwork. It slid through the house 
and dissolved into swimming specks within 
the eyeball as soon as it reached the burn- 
ing light of the garden. Hummil went 
about his business till even. When he came 
into dinner he found himself sitting at the 


At the End of the Passage 143 

table. The thing rose and walked out 
hastily. 

No living man knows what that week 
held for Hummil. An increase of the epi- 
demic kept Spurstow in camp among the 
coolies, and all he could do was to tele- 
graph to Mottram, bidding him go to the 
bungalow and sleep there. But Mottram 
was forty miles away from the nearest tele- 
graph, and knew nothing of anything save 
the needs of the survey till he met early on 
Sunday morning Lowndes and Spurstow^ 
heading toward Hummil’s for the weekly' 
gathering. 

“ Hope the poor chap’s in a better tem- 
per,” said the former, swinging himself off 
his horse at the door. “ I suppose he isn’t 
up yet.” 

“ I’ll just have a look at him,” said the 
doctor. “ If he’s asleep there’s no need to 
wake him.” 

And an instant later, by the tone of Spur- 
stow’s voice calling upon them to enter, the 
men knew what had happened. 

The punkah was still being pulled over 
the bed, but Hummil had departed this life 
at least three hours before. 

The body lay on its back, hands clinched 
by the side, as Spurstow had seen it lying 
seven nights previously. In the staring 
eyes was written terror beyond the expres- 
sion of any pen. 


144 Mine Own People 

Mottram, who had entered behind 
Lowndes, bent over the dead and touched 
the forehead lightly with his lips. “ Oh, 
you lucky, lucky devil!” he whispered. 

But Lowndes had seen the eyes, and had 
withdrawn shuddering to the other side of 
the room. 

“ Poor chap I poor chap ! And the last 
time I met him I was angry. Spurstow, 
we should have watched him. Has he — ” 

Deftly Spurstow continued his investiga- 
tion, ending by a search round the room. 

“ No, he hasn’t,” he snapped. “ There’s 
no trace of anything. Call in the servants.” 

They came, eight or ten of them, whis- 
pering and peering over each other’s 
shoulders. 

“ When did your sahib go to bed? ” said 
Spurstow. 

“ At eleven or ten, we think,” said Hum- 
mil’s personal servant. 

“ He was well then? But how should 
you know? ” 

“ He was not ill, as far as our compre- 
hension extended. But he had slept very 
little for three nights. This I know, be- 
cause I saw him walking much, and espe- 
cially in the heart of the night.” 

As Spurstow was arranging the sheet, a 
big, straight-necked hunting-spur tumbled 
on the ground. The doctor groaned. The 
personal servant peeped at the body. 


At the End of the Passage 145 

“What do you think, Chuma?” said 
Spurstow, catching the look in the dark 
face. 

“ Heaven-born, in my poor opinion, this 
that was my master has descended into the 
Dark Places, and there has been caught, 
because he was not able to escape with 
sufficient speed. We have the spur for evi- 
dence that he fought with Fear. Thus 
have I seen men of my race do with thorns 
when a spell was laid upon them to over- 
take them in their sleeping hours and they 
dared not sleep.” 

“ Chuma, you’re a mud-head. Go out 
and prepare seals to be set on the sahib’s 
property.” 

“ God has made the heaven-born. God 
has made me. Who are we, to inquire into 
the dispensations of God? I will bid the 
other servants hold aloof while you are 
reckoning the tale of the sahib’s property. 
They are all thieves, and would steal.” 

“ As far as I can make out, he died from 
— oh, anything: stopping of the heart’s 
action, heat-apoplexy, or some other visita- 
tion,” said Spurstow to his companions. 

“ We must make an inventory of his effects, 
and so on.” 

“ He was scared to death,” insisted 
Lowndes. “ Look at those eyes ! For 
pity’s sake, don’t let him be buried with 
them open! ” 


146 Mine Own People 

“ Whatever it was, he’s out of all the 
trouble now,” said Mottram, softly. 

Spurstow was peering into the open eyes. 

“ Come here,” said he. “ Can you see 
anything there? ” 

“ I can’t face it! ” whimpered Lowndes. 
‘‘ Cover up the face! Is there any fear on 
earth that can turn a man into that like- 
ness? It’s ghastly. Oh, Spurstow, cover 
him up! ” 

“No fear — on earth,” said Spurstow. 
Mottram leaned over his shoulder and 
looked intently. 

“ I see nothing except some gray blurs 
in the pupil. There can be nothing there, 
you know.” 

“ Even so. Well, let’s think. It’ll take 
half a day to knock up any sort of coffin; 
and he must have died at midnight. 
Lowndes, old man, go out and tell the 
coolies to break ground next to Jevins’ 
grave. Mottram, go round the house with 
Chuma and see that the seals are put on 
things. Send a couple of men to me here, 
and I’ll arrange.” 

The strong-armed servants when they 
returned to their own kind told a strange 
story of the doctor sahib vainly trying to 
call their master back to life by magic arts 
— to wit, the holding of a little green box 
opposite each of the dead man’s eyes, of a 
frequent clicking of the same, and of a be- 


At the End of the Passage 147 

wildered muttering on the part of the doc- 
tor sahib, who subsequently took the little 
green box away with him. 

The resonant hammering of a coffin-lid 
is no pleasant thing to hear, but those who 
have experience maintain that much more 
terrible is the soft swish of the bed-linen, 
the reeving and unreeving of the bed-tapes, 
when he who has fallen by the road-side is 
appareled for burial, sinking gradually as 
the tapes are tied over, till the swaddled 
shape touches the floor and there is no pro- 
test against the indignity of hasty disposal. 

At the last moment Lowndes was seized 
with scruples of conscience. “ Ought you 
to read the service — from beginning to 
end?” said he. 

“ I intend to. You’re my senior as a 
civilian. You can take it, if you like.” 

“ I didn’t mean that for a moment. I 
only thought if we could get a chaplain 
from somewhere — I’m willing to ride any- 
where — and give poor Hummil a better 
chance. That’s all.” 

“ Bosh ! ” said Spurstow, as he framed 
his lips to the tremendous words that stand 
at the head of the burial service. 

After breakfast they smoked a pipe in 
silence to the memory of the dead. Then 
said Spurstow, absently: 

“ ’Tisn’t in medical science.” 


148 Mine Own People 

“ What?” 

“ Things in a dead man’s eyes.” 

“ For goodness’ sake, leave that horror 
alone ! ” said Lowndes. “ I’ve seen a na- 
tive die of fright when a tiger chivied him. 
I know what killed Hummil.” 

“The deuce you do! I’m going to try 
to see.” And the doctor retreated into the 
bathroom with a Kodak camera, splashing 
and grunting for ten minutes. Then there 
was the sound of something being ham- 
mered to pieces, and Spurstow emerged, 
very white indeed. 

“ Have you got a picture? ” said Mot- 
tram. “ What does the thing look like? ” 

“ Nothing there. It was impossible, of 
course. You needn’t look, Mottram. I’ve 
torn up the films. There was nothing 
there. It was impossible.” 

“ That,” said Lowndes, very distinctly, 
watching the shaking hand striving to re- 
light the pipe, “ is a damned lie.” 

There was no further speech for a long 
time. The hot wind whistled without, and 
the dry trees sobbed. Presently the daily 
train, winking brass, burnished steel, and 
spouting steam, pulled up, panting in the 
intense glare. “ We’d better go on on 
that,” said Spurstow. “ Go back to work. 
I’ve written my certificate. We can’t do 
any more good here. Come on.” 

No one moved. It is not pleasant to face 


At the End of the Passage 149 

railway journeys at midday in June. Spur- 
stow gathered up his hat and whip, and, 
turning in the doorway, said : 

“ There may be heaven — there must be hell. 
Meantime, there is our life here. We-ell ? ” 

But neither Mottram nor Lowndes had 
any answer to the question. 


THE INCARNATION 

OF 

KRISHNA MULVANEY 


Once upon a time, and very far from 
this land, lived three men who loved each 
other so greatly that neither man nor 
woman could come between them. They 
were in no sense refined, nor to be admit- 
ted to the outer door-mats of decent folk, 
because they happened to be private sol- 
diers in her majesty’s army; and private 
soldiers of that employ have small time for 
self-culture. Their duty is to keep them- 
selves and their accouterments specklessly 
clean, to refrain from getting drunk more 
often than is necessary, to obey their supe- 
riors, and to pray for a war. All these 
things my friends accomplished, and of 
their own motion threw in some fighting- 
work for which the Army Regulations did 
not call. Their fate sent them to serve in 
India, which is not a golden country, 
though poets have sung otherwise. There 
150 


Incarnation of Mulvaney 15 1 

men die with great swiftness, and those 
who live suffer many and curious things. 
I do not think that my friends concerned 
themselves much with the social or political 
aspects of the East. They attended a not 
unimportant war on the northern frontier, 
another one on our western boundary, and 
a third in Upper Burmah. Then their 
regiment sat still to recruit, and the bound- 
less monotony of cantonment life was their 
portion. They were drilled morning and 
evening on the same dusty parade-ground. 
They wandered up and down the same 
stretch of dusty white road, attended the 
same church and the same grog-shop, and 
slept in the same lime-washed barn of a 
barrack for two long years. There was 
Mulvaney, the father in the craft, who had 
served with various regiments, from Ber- 
muda to Halifax, old in war, scarred, reck- 
less, resourceful, and in his pious hours an 
unequaled soldier. To him turned for help 
and comfort six and a half feet of slow- 
moving, heavy-footed Yorkshireman, born 
on the wolds, bred in the dales, and edu- 
cated chiefly among the carriers’ carts at 
the back of York railway-station. His 
name was Learoyd, and his chief virtue an 
unmitigated patience which helped him to 
win fights. How Ortheris, a fox-terrier of 
a Cockney, ever came to be one of the trio, 
is a mystery which even to-day I can not 


152 Mine Own People 

explain. “ There was always three av us,” 
Mulvaney used to say. “ An’ by the grace 
av God, so long as our service lasts, three 
av us they’ll always be. ’Tis betther so.” 

They desired no companionship beyond 
their own, and evil it was for any man of 
the regiment who attempted dispute with 
them. Physical argument was out of the 
question as regarded Mulvaney and the 
Yorkshireman; and assault on Ortheris 
meant a combined attack from these twain 
— a business which no five men were anxi- 
ous to have on their hands. Therefore they 
flourished, sharing their drinks, their 
tobacco, and their money, good luck and 
evil, battle and the chances of death, life 
and the chances of happiness from Calicut 
in southern, to Peshawur in northern India. 
Through no merit of my own it was my 
good fortune to be in a measure admitted 
to their friendship — frankly by Mulvaney 
from the beginning, sullenly and with re- 
luctance by Learoyd, and suspiciously by 
Ortheris, who held to it that no man not 
in the army could fraternize with a red- 
coat. “ Like to like,” said he. “ I’m a 
bloomin’ sodger — he’s a bloomin’ civilian. 
’Taint natural — that’s all.” 

But that was not all. They thawed pro- 
gressively, and in the thawing told me more 
of their lives and adventures than I am 
likely to find room for here. 


Incarnation of Mulvaney 153 

Omitting all else, this tale begins with 
the lamentable thirst that was at the begin- 
ning of First Causes. Never was such a 
thirst — Mulvaney told me so. They 
kicked against their compulsory virtue, but 
the attempt was only successful in the case 
of Ortheris. He, whose talents were 
many, went forth into the highways and 
stole a dog from a “ civilian ” — videlicet, 
some one, he knew not who, not in the 
army. Now that civilian was but newly 
connected by marriage with the colonel of 
the regiment, and outcry was made from 
quarters least anticipated by Ortheris, and, 
in the end, he was forced, lest a worse thing 
should happen, to dispose at ridiculously 
unremunerative rates of as promising a 
small terrier as ever graced one end of a 
leading-string. The purchase-money was 
barely sufficient for one small outbreak 
which led him to the guard-room. He 
escaped, however, with nothing worse than 
a severe reprimand, and a few hours of 
punishment drill. Not for nothing had he 
acquired the reputation of being “ the best 
soldier of his inches ” in the regiment. 
Mulvaney had taught personal cleanliness 
and efficiency as the first articles of his 
companions’ creed. “ A dhirty man,” he 
was used to say, in the speech of his kind, 

“ goes to clink for a weakness in the knees, 
an’ is coort-martialed for a pair av socks 


154 Mine Own People 

missin’; but a clane man, such as is an 
ornament to his service — a man whose 
buttons are gold, whose coat is wax upon 
him, an’ whose ’couterments are widout a 
speck — that man may, spakin’ in reason, 
do fwhat he likes, an’ dhrink from day to 
divil. That’s the pride av bein’ dacint.” 

We sat together, upon a day, in the shade 
of a ravine far from the barracks, where a 
water-course used to run in rainy weather. 
Behind us was the scrub jungle, in which 
jackals, peacocks, the gray wolves of the 
Northwestern Provinces, and occasionally 
a tiger estrayed from Central India, were 
supposed to dwell. In front lay the can- 
tonment, glaring white under a glaring sun, 
and on either side ran the broad road that 
led to Delhi. 

It was the scrub that suggested to my 
mind the wisdom of Mulvaney taking a 
day’s leave and going upon a shooting tour. 
The peacock is a holy bird throughout 
India, and whoso slays one is in danger of 
being mobbed by the nearest villagers; but 
on the last occasion that Mulvaney had 
gone forth he had contrived, without in 
the least offending local religious suscepti- 
bilities, to return with six beautiful peacock 
skins which he sold to profit. It seemed 
just possible then — 

“ But fwhat manner av use is ut to me 
goin’ widout a dhrink? The ground’s pow- 


Incarnation of Mulvaney 155 

dher-dry underfoot, an’ ut gets unto the 
throat fit to kill,” wailed Mulvaney, looking 
at me reproachfully. “ An’ a peacock is 
not a bird you can catch the tail av onless 
ye run. Can a man run on wather — an’ 
jungle- wather, too? ” 

Ortheris had considered the question in 
all its bearings. He spoke, chewing his 
pipe-stem meditatively : 

“ ‘ Go forth, return in glory. 

To Clusium’s royal ’ome; 

An’ round these bloomin’ temples ang 
The bloomin’ shields o’ Rome.’ 

You’d better go. You ain’t to shoot your- 
self ■ — not while there’s a chanst of liquor. 
Me an’ Learoyd ’ll stay at ’ome an’ keep 
shop — case o’ anythin’ turnin’ up. But 
you go out with a gas-pipe gun an’ ketch 
the little peacockses or somethin’. You 
kin get one day’s leave easy as winkin’. 
Go along an’ get it, an’ get peacockses or 
somethin’.” 

“ Jock,” said Mulvaney, turning to Lea- 
royd, who was half asleep under the shadow 
of the bank. He roused slowly. 

“ Sitha, Mulvaney, go,” said he. 

And Mulvaney went, cursing his allies 
with Irish fluency and barrack-room point. 

“ Take note,” said he, when he had won 
his holiday and appeared dressed in his 
roughest clothes with the only other regi- 
mental fowling-piece in his hand — “ take 


156 Mine Own People 

note, Jock, an’ you, Orth’ris, I am goin’ in 
the face av my own will — all for to please 
you. I misdoubt anythin’ will come av 
permiscuous huntin’ afther peacockses in a 
disolit Ian’ ; an’ I know that I will lie down 
an’ die wid thirrst. Me catch peacockses 
for you, ye lazy scuts — an’ be sacrificed 
by the peasanthry,” 

He waved a huge paw and went away. 

At twilight, long before the appointed 
hour, he returned empty-handed, much be- 
grimed with dirt. 

“Peacockses?” queried Ortheris, from 
the safe rest of a barrack-room table, 
whereon he was smoking cross-legged, 
Learoyd fast asleep on a bench. 

“ Jock,” said Mulvaney, as he stirred up 
the sleeper. “ Jock, can ye fight? Will ye 
fight? ” 

Very slowly the meaning of the words 
communicated itself to the half-roused 
man. He understood — and again — what 
might these things mean? Mulvaney was 
shaking him savagely. Meantime, the men 
in the room howled with delight. There 
was war in the confederacy at last — war 
and the breaking of bonds. 

Barrack-room etiquette is stringent. On 
the direct challenge must follow the direct 
reply. This is more binding than the tie 
of tried friendship. Once again Mulvaney 
repeated the question. Learoyd answered 


Incarnation of Mulvaney i 

by the only means in his power, and so 
swiftly, that the Irishman had barely time 
to avoid the blow. The laughter around 
increased. Learoyd looked bewilderedly 
at his friend — himself as greatly bewil- 
dered. Ortheris dropped from the table. 
His world was falling. 

“Come outside,” said Mulvaney; and as 
the occupants of the barrack-room pre- 
pared joyously to follow, he turned and 
said furiously; “There will be no fight 
this night — onless any wan av you is wish- 
ful to assist. The man that does, follows 
on.” 

No man moved. The three passed out 
into the moonlight, Learoyd fumbling with 
the buttons of his coat. The parade- 
ground was deserted except for the scurry- 
ing jackals. Mulvaney’s impetuous rush 
carried his companions far into the open 
ere Learoyd attempted to turn round and 
continue the discussion. 

“ Be still now. Twas my fault for be- 
ginnin’ things in the middle av an end, 
Jock. I should ha’ comminst wid an ex- 
planation; but Jock, dear, on your sowl, 
are ye fit, think you, for the finest fight 
that iver was — betther than fightin’ me? 
Considher before ye answer.” 

More than ever puzzled, Learoyd turned 
round two or three times, felt an arm, 
kicked tentatively, and answered: “Ah’m 


158 Mine Own People 

fit.” He was accustomed to fight blindly 
at the bidding of the superior mind. 

They sat them down, the men looking 
on from afar, and Mulvaney untangled 
himself in mighty words. 

“Followin’ your fools’ scheme, I wint out 
into the thrackless desert beyond the bar- 
ricks. An’ there I met a pious Hindoo 
dhriving a bullock-kyart. I tuk ut for 
granted he wud be delighted for to convoy 
me a piece, an’ I jumped in ” 

“You long, lazy, black-haired swine,” 
drawled Ortheris, who would have done the 
same thing under similar circumstances. 

“ ’Twas the height av policy. That nay- 
gur man dhruv miles an’ miles — as far as 
the new railway line they’re buildin’ now 
back av the Tavi River. ‘ ’Tis a kyart for 
dhirt only,’ says he now an’ again timor- 
ously, to get me out av ut. ‘ Dhirt I am,* 
sez I, ‘an’ the dhryest that you iver 
kyarted. Dhrive on, me son, an’ glory be 
wid you.’ At that I wint to slape, an’ took 
no heed till he pulled up on the embank- 
ment av the line where the coolies were 
pilin’ mud. There was a matther av two 
thousand coolies on that line — you remim- 
ber that. Prisintly a bell rang, an’ they 
throops off to a big pay-shed. ‘Where’s 
the white man in charge?’ sez I to my 
kyart-driver. ‘ In the slied,’ sez he, * en- 
gaged on a riffle.’ ‘ A fwhat ? ’ sez I. ‘ Rif- 


Incarnation of Mulvaney 159 

fle/ sez he. ‘You take ticket. He takes 
money. You get nothin’.’ ‘Oho!’ sez I, 
‘ that’s what the shuperior an’ cultivated 
man calls a raffle, me misbeguided child av 
darkness an’ sin. Lead on to that raffle, 
though fwhat the mischief ’tis doin’ so far 
away from uts home — which is the char- 
ity-bazaar at Christmas, an’ the colonel’s 
wife grinnin’ behind the tea-table — is more 
than I know.’ Wid that I wint to the shed 
an’ found ’twas pay-day among the coolies. 
Their wages was on a table forninst a big, 
fine, red buck av a man — sivun fut high, 
four fut wide, an’ three fut thick, wid a fist 
on him like a corn-sack. He was payin’ 
the coolies fair an’ easy, but he wud ask 
each man if he wud raffle that month, an’ 
each man sez, ‘Yes, av course.’ Thin he 
would deduct from their wages accordin’. 
Whin all was paid, he filled an ould cigar- 
box full av gun-wads an’ scattered ut 
among the coolies. They did not take 
much joy av that performince, an’ small 
wondher. A man close to me picks up 
a black gun-wad, an’ sings out, ‘ I have 
ut’ ‘ Good may ut do you,’ sez I. The 
coolie went forward to this big, fine red 
man, who threw a cloth off of the most 
sumpshus, jooled, enameled, an’ variously 
bediviled sedan-chair I iver saw.” 

“ Sedan-chair! Put your ’ead in a bag. 
That was a palanquin. Don’t yer know a 


i6o Mine Own People 

palanquin when you see it? ” said Ortheris, 
with great scorn. 

“ I chuse to call ut sedan-chair, an’ chair 
ut shall be, little man,” continued the Irish- 
man. “ ’Twas a most amazin’ chair — all 
lined wid pink silk an’ fitted wid red silk 
curtains. ‘ Here ut is,’ sez the red man. 
‘ Here ut is,’ sez the coolie, an’ he grinned 
weakly ways. ‘Is ut any use to you?’ 
sez the red man. ‘No,’ sez the coolie; 
‘ I’d like to make a presint av ut to 
you.’ ‘ I am graciously pleased to ac- 
cept that same,’ sez the red man; an’ 
at that all the coolies cried aloud fwhat 
was mint for cheerful notes, an’ wint 
back to their diggin’, lavin’ me alone in 
the shed. The red man saw me, an’ his 
face grew blue on his big, fat neck. 
‘ Fwhat d’you want here? ’ sez he. ‘ Stand- 
in’-room an’ no more,’ sez I, ‘ onless it may 
be fwhat ye niver had, an’ that’s manners, 
ye rafflin’ ruffian,’ for I was not goin’ to 
have the service throd upon. ‘ Out of this,’ 
sez he. ‘ I’m in charge av this section av 
construction.’ ‘ I’m in charge av mesilf,’ 
sez I, ‘ an’ it’s like I will stay awhile. D’ye 
raffle much in these parts? ’ ‘ Fwhat’s that 

to you?’ sez he. ‘Nothin’,’ sez I, ‘but a 
great dale to you, for begad I’m thinkin’ 
you get the full half av your revenue from 
that sedan-chair. Is ut always raffled so? ’ 
I sez, an’ wid that I wint to a coolie to ask 


Incarnation of Mulvaney 1 6 1 

questions. Bhoys, that man’s name is 
Dearsley, an’ he’s been rafflin’ that ould 
sedan-chair monthly this matter av nine 
months. Ivry coolie on the section takes 
a ticket — or he gives ’em the go — wanst 
a month on pay-day. Ivry coolie that wins 
ut gives lit back to him, for ’tis too big to 
carry away, an’ he’d sack the man that 
thried to sell ut. That Dearsley has been 
makin’ the rowlin’ wealth av Roshus by 
nefarious rafflin’. Two thousand coolies 
defrauded wanst a month!” 

“ Dom t’ coolies. Hast gotten t’ cheer, 
man? ” said Learoyd. 

“ Mould on. Havin’ onearthed this 
amazin’ an’ stupenjus fraud committed by 
the man Dearsley, I hild a council av war; 
he thryin’ all the time to sejuce me into a 
fight wid opprobrious language. That 
sedan-chair niver belonged by right to any 
foreman av coolies. ’Tis a king’s chair or 
a quane’s. There’s gold on ut an’ silk an’ 
all manner av trapesemints. Bhoys, ’tis not 
for me to countenance any sort av wrong- 
doin’ — me bein’ the ould man — but — 
any way he has had ut nine months, an’ he 
dare not make throuble av ut was taken 
from him. Five miles away, or ut may be 
six ” 

There was a long pause, and the jackals 
howled merrily. Learoyd bared one arm 
and contemplated it in the moonlight. 


1 62 Mine Own People 

Then he nodded partly to himself and 
partly to his friends. Ortheris wriggled 
with suppressed emotion. 

“ I thought ye wud see the reasonableness 
av ut,’ said Mulvaney. “ I made bould to 
say as much to the man before. He was 
for a direct front attack — fut, horse, an’ 
guns — an’ all for nothin’, seein’ that I had 
no transport to convey the machine away. 
* I will not argue wid you,’ sez I, ‘ this day, 
but subsequently. Mister Dearsley, me raf- 
flin’ jool, we’ll talk ut out lengthways. ’Tis 
no good policy to swindle the naygur av his 
hard-earned emolumints, an’ by presint in- 
formashin’ — ’twas the kyart man that tould 
me — ‘ ye’ve been perpethrating that same 
for nine months. But I’m a just man,’ sez 
I, ‘ an’ overlookin’ the presumpshin that 
yondher settee wid the gilt top was not 
come by honust ’ — at that he turned sky- 
green, so I knew things was more thrue 
than tellable — ‘ I’m willin’ to compound 
the felony for this month’s winnin’s.’ ” 

“Ah! Ho! ” from Learoyd and Ortheris. 

“ That man Dearsley’s rushin’ on his 
fate,” continued Mulvaney, solemnly wag- 
ging his head. “ All hell had no name bad 
enough for me that tide. Faith, he called 
me a robber! Me! that was savin’ him 
from continuin’ in his evil ways widout a 
remonstrince — an’ to a man av conscience 
a remonstrince may change the chune av 


Incarnation of Mulvaney 163 

his life. ‘ ’Tis not for me to argue/ sez I, 
‘ fwhatever ye are, Mister Dearsley, but by 
my hand I’ll take away the temptation for 
you that lies in that sedan-chair.’ ‘You 
will have to fight me for ut/ sez he, ‘ for 
well I know you will never dare make re- 
port to any one.’ ‘ Fight I will,’ sez I, ‘ but 
not this day, for I’m rejuced for want av 
nourishment.’ ‘ Ye’re an ould bould hand,’ 
sez he, sizin’ me up an’ down; ‘ an a jool av 
a fight we will have. Eat now an’ dhrink, 
an’ go your way.’ Wid that he gave me 
some hump an’ whisky — good whisky — 
an’ we talked av this an’ that the while. 
‘ It goes hard on me now,’ sez I, wipin’ 
my mouth, ‘ to confiscate that piece av fur- 
niture; but justice is justice.’ ‘Ye’ve not 
got ut yet,’ sez he; ‘there’s the fight be- 
tween.’ ‘ There is,’ sez I, ‘ an’ a good fight. 
Ye shall have the pick av the best quality 
in my regiment for the dinner you have 
given this day.’ Thin I came hot-foot for 
you two. Hould your tongue, the both. 
’Tis this way. To-morrow we three will 
go there an’ he shall have his pick betune 
me an’ Jock. Jock’s a deceivin’ fighter, for 
he is all fat to the eyes, an’ he moves slow. 
Now I’m all beef to the look, an’ I move 
quick. By my reckonin’, the Dearsley man 
won’t take me; so me an’ Orth’ris ’ll see fair 
play. Jock, I tell you, ’twill be big fightin’ 
— whipped, wid the cream above the jam. 


164 Mine Own People 

Afther the business ’twill take a good three 
av us — Jock ’ll be very hurt — to take 
away that sedan-chair,” 

“ Palanquin.” This from Ortheris. 

“ Fwhatever ut is, we must have ut. 
Tis the only sellin’ piece av property widin 
reach that we can get so cheap. An’ 
fwhat’s a fight afther all? He has robbed 
the naygur man dishonust. We rob him 
honust.” 

“ But wot’ll we do with the bloomin’ 
harticle when we’ve got it? Them palan- 
quins are as big as ’ouses, an’ uncommon 
’ard to sell, as McCleary said when ye stole 
the sentry-box from the Curragh.” 

“ Who’s goin’ to do t’ fightin’? ” said Lea- 
royd, and Ortheris subsided. The three 
returned to barracks without a word. Mul- 
vaney’s last argument clinched the matter. 
This palanquin was property, vendible and 
to be attained in the least embarrassing 
fashion. It would eventually become beer. 
Great was Mulvaney. 

Next afternoon a procession of three 
formed itself and disappeared into the scrub 
in the direction of the new railway line. 
Learoyd alone was without care, for Mul- 
vaney dived darkly into the future and lit- 
tle Ortheris feared the unknown. 

What befell at that interview in the 
lonely pay-shed by the side of the half-built 
embankment only a few hundred coolies 


Incarnation of Mulvaney 165 

know, and their tale is a confusing one, 
running thus: 

“We were at work. Three men in red 
coats came. They saw the sahib — Dears- 
ley Sahib. They made oration, and notice- 
ably the small man among the red-coats. 
Dearsley Sahib also made oration, and used 
many very strong words. Upon this talk 
they departed together to an open space, 
and there the fat man in the red coat fought 
with Dearsley Sahib after the custom of 
white men — with his hands, making no 
noise, and never at all pulling Dearsley 
Sahib’s hair. Such of us as were not afraid 
beheld these things for just so long a time 
as a man needs to cook the midday meal. 
The small man in the red coat had pos- 
sessed himself of Dearsley Sahib’s watch. 
No, he did not steal that watch. He held 
it in his hands, and at certain season made 
outcry, and the twain ceased their combat, 
which was like the combat of young bulls 
in spring. Both men were soon all red, 
but Dearsley Sahib was much more red 
than the other. Seeing this, and fearing 
for his life — because we greatly loved him 
— some fifty of us made shift to rush upon 
the red coats. But a certain man — very 
black as to the hair, and in no way to be 
confused with the small man, or the fat 
man who fought — that man, we affirm, 
ran upon us, and of us he embraced some 


1 66 Mine Own People 

ten or fifty in both arms, and beat our heads 
together, so that our livers turned to water, 
and we ran away. It is not good to inter- 
fere in the fightings of white men. After 
that Dearsley Sahib fell and did not rise; 
these men jumped upon his stomach and 
despoiled him of all his money, and at- 
tempted to fire the pay-shed, and departed. 
Is it true that Dearsley Sahib makes no 
complaint of these latter things having 
been done? We were senseless with fear, 
and do not at all remember. There was 
no palanquin near the pay-shed. What do 
we know about palanquins. Is it true that 
Dearsley Sahib does not return to this 
place, on account of sickness, for ten days? 
This is the fault of those bad men in the red 
coats, who should be severely punished; 
for Dearsley Sahib is both our father and 
mother, and we love him much. Yet if 
Dearsley Sahib does not return to this 
place at all, we will speak the truth. There 
was a palanquin, for the up-keep of which 
we were forced to pay nine tenths of our 
monthly wage. On such mulctings Dears- 
ley Sahib allowed us to make obeisance to 
him before the palanquin. What could we 
do? We were poor men. He took a full 
half of our wages. Will the government 
repay us those moneys? Those three men 
in red coats bore the palanquin upon their 
shoulders and departed. All the money 


Incarnation of Mulvaney 167 

that Dearsley Sahib had taken from us was 
in the cushions of that palanquin. There- 
fore they stole it. Thousands of rupees 
were there — all our money. It was our 
bank-box, to fill which we cheerfully con- 
tributed to Dearsley Sahib three sevenths 
of our monthly wage. Why does the 
white man look upon us with the eye of 
disfavor? Before God, there was a palan- 
quin, and now there is no palanquin; and 
if they send the police here to make inqui- 
sition, we can only say that there never 
has been any palanquin. Why should a 
palanquin be near these works? We are 
poor men, and we know nothing.” 

Such is the simplest version of the sim- 
plest story connected with the descent upon 
Dearsley. From the lips of the coolies I 
received it. Dearsley himself was in no 
condition to say anything, and Mulvaney 
preserved a massive silence, broken only 
by the occasional licking of the lips. He 
had seen a fight so gorgeous that even his 
power of speech was taken from him. I 
respected that reserve until, three days after 
the affair, I discovered in a disused stable 
in my quarters a palanquin of unchastened 
splendor — evidently in past days the litter 
of a queen. The pole whereby it swung 
between the shoulders of the bearers was 
rich with the painted papier-mache of Cash- 
mere. The shoulder-pads were of yellow 


1 68 Mine Own People 

silk. The panels of the litter itself were 
ablaze with the loves of all the gods and 
goddesses of the Hindoo Pantheon — lac- 
quer on cedar. The cedar sliding doors 
were fitted with hasps of translucent Jaipur 
enamel, and ran in grooves shod with sil- 
ver. The cushions were of brocaded Delhi 
silk, and the curtains, which once hid any 
glimpse of the beauty of the king’s palace, 
were stiff with gold. Closer investigation 
showed that the entire fabric was every- 
where rubbed and discolored by time and 
wear ; but even thus it was sufficiently gor- 
geous to deserve housing on the threshold of 
a royal zenana. I found no fault with it, ex- 
cept that it was in my stable. Then, trying 
to lift it by the sliver-shod shoulder-pole, I 
laughed. The road from Dearsley’s pay- 
shed to the cantonment was a narrow and 
uneven one, and traversed by three very 
inexperienced palanquin-bearers, one of 
whom was sorely battered about the head, 
must have been a path of torment. Still 
I did not quite recognize the right of the 
three musketeers to turn me into a “ fence.” 

“ I’m askin’ you to warehouse ut,” said 
]\Iulvaney, when he was brought to con- 
sider the question. “ There’s no steal in ut. 
Dearsley tould us we cud have ut if we 
fought. Jock fought — an’ oh, sorr, when 
the throuble was at uts finest an’ Jock was 
bleedin ’like a stuck pig, an’ little Orth’ris 


Incarnation of Mulvaney 169 

was shquealin’ on one leg, chewin’ big bites 
out av Dearsley’s watch, I wud ha’ given 
my place in the fight to have had you see 
wan round. He tuk Jock, as I suspicioned 
he would, an’ Jock was deceptive. Nine 
roun’s they were even matched, an’ at the 
tenth — About that palanquin now. 
There’s not the lest trouble in the world, 
or we wud not ha’ brought ut here. You 
will ondherstand that the queen — God 
bless her! — does not reckon for a privit 
soldier to kape elephints an’ palanquins an’ 
sich in barricks. Afther we had dhragged 
ut down from Dearsley’s through that cruel 
scrub that n’r broke Orth’ris’ heart, we set 
ut in the ravine for a night; an’ a thief av a 
porcupine an’ a civit-cat av a jackal roosted 
in ut, as well we knew in the mornin’. I 
put ut to you, sorr, is an elegant palanquin, 
fit for the princess, the natural abidin’-place 
av all the vermin in cantonmints? We 
brought ut to you, afther dhark, and put 
ut in your shtable. Do not let your con- 
science prick. Think av the rejoicin’ men 
in the pay-shed yonder — lookin’ at Dears- 
ley wid his head tied up in a towel — an’ 
well knowin’ that they can dhraw their pay 
ivery month widout stoppages for riffles. 
Indirectly, sorr, you have rescued from an 
onprincipled son av a night-hawk the peas- 
antry av a numerous village. An’ besides, 
will I let that sedan-chair rot on our hands? 


170 Mine Own People 

Not I. Tis not every day a piece av pure 
joolry comes into the market. There’s not 
a king widin these forty miles ” — he waved 
his hand round the dusty horizon — “ not a 
king wud not be glad to buy it. Some day 
meself, whin I have leisure, I’ll take ut up 
along the road an’ dispose av ut.” 

“ How? ” said I. 

“ Get into ut, av course, an’ keep wan 
eye open through the curtain. Whin I see 
a likely man of the native persuasion, I 
will descend blushin’ from my canopy, and 
say: ‘ Buy a palanquin, ye black scut? ’ 
I will have to hire four men to carry me 
first, though ; and that’s impossible till next 
pay-day.” 

Curiously enough, Learoyd, who had 
fought for the prize, and in the winning 
secured the highest pleasure life had to 
offer him, was altogether disposed to un- 
dervalue it, while Ortheris openly said it 
would be better to break the thing up. 
Dearsley,he argued, might be a many-sided 
man, capable, despite his magnificent fight- 
ing qualities, of setting in motion the ma- 
chinery of the civil law, a thing much 
abhorred by the soldier. Under the cir- 
cumstances their fun had come and passed; 
the next pay-day was close at hand, when 
there would be beer for all. Wherefore 
longer conserve the painted palanquin? 

“ A first-class rifle-shot an’ a good little 


Incarnation of Mulvaney 1 7 1 

man av your inches you are,” said Mul- 
vaney. “ But you niver had a head worth 
a soft-boiled egg. Tis me has to lie awake 
av nights schamin’ an’ plottin’ for the three 
av us. Orth’ris, me son, ’tis no matther 
av a few gallons av beer — no, nor twenty 
gallons — but tubs an’ vats an’ firkins in 
that sedan-chair.” 

Meantime, the palanquin stayed in my 
stall, the key of which was in Mulvaney’s 
hand. 

Pay-day came, and with it beer. It was 
not in experience to hope that Mulvaney, 
dried by four weeks’ drought, would avoid 
excess. Next morning he and the palan- 
quin had disappeared. He had taken the 
precaution of getting three days’ leave “ to 
see a friend on the railway,” and the colonel, 
well knowing that the seasonal outburst 
was near, and hoping it would spend its 
force beyond the limits of his jurisdiction, 
cheerfully gave him all he demanded. At 
this point his history, as recorded in the 
mess-room, stopped. 

Ortheris carried it not much further. 
“ No, ’e wasn’t drunk,” said the little man, 
loyally, “ the liquor was no more than 
feelin’ its way round inside of ’im; but ’e 
went an’ filled that ’ole bloomin’ palanquin 
with bottles ’fore ’e went off. He’s gone 
an’ ’ired six men to carry ’im, an’ I ’ad 
to ’elp ’im into ’is nupshal couch, ’cause 


172 Mine Own People 

’e wouldn’t ’ear reason. ’E’s gone off in 
’is shirt an’ trousies, swearin’ tremenjus — 
gone down the road in the palanquin, 
wavin’ ’is legs out o’ windy.” 

“ Yes,” said I, “ but where? ” 

“ Now you arx me a questipn. ’E said 
*e was going to sell that palanquin; but 
from observations what happened when I 
was stuffin’ ’im through the door, I fancy 
'e’s gone to the new embankment to mock 
at Dearsley. Soon as Jock’s off duty I’m 
going there to see if ’e’s safe — not Mul- 
vaney, but t’other man. My saints, but I 
pity ’im as ’elps Terence out o’ the palan- 
quin when ’e’s once fair drunk ! ” 

“ He’ll come back,” I said. 

“ ’Corse ’e will. On’y question is, what’ll 
'e be doin’ on the road. Killing Dearsley, 
like as not. ’E shouldn’t ’a gone without 
Jock or me.” 

Re-enforced by Learoyd, Ortheris 
sought the foreman of the coolie-gang. 
Dearsley’s head was still embellished with 
towels. Mulvaney, drunk or sober, would 
have struck no man in that condition, 
and Dearsley indignantly denied that he 
would have taken advantage of the intoxi- 
cated brave. 

“ I had my pick o’ you two,” he ex- 
plained to Learoyd, “ and you got my 
palanquin — not before I’d made my profit 
on it. Why’d I do harm when everything’s 


Incarnation of Mul van ey 173 

settled? Your man did come here — 
drunk as Davy’s cow on a frosty night — • 
came a-purpose to mock me — stuck his 
’ead out of the door an’ called me a crucified 
hodman. I made him drunker, an’ sent 
him along. But I never touched him.” 

To these things, Learoyd, slow to per- 
ceive the evidences of sincerity, answered 
only: “ If owt comes to Mulvaney long o’ 
you, I’ll gripple you, clouts or no clouts 
on your ugly head, an’ I’ll draw t’ throat 
twisty-ways, man. See there now.” 

The embassy removed itself, and Dears- 
ley, the battered, laughed alone over his 
supper that evening. 

Three days passed — a fourth and a fifth. 
The week drew to a close, and Mulvaney 
did not return. He, his royal palanquin, 
and his six attendants, had vanished into 
air. A very large and very tipsy soldier, 
his feet sticking out of the litter of a reign- 
ing princess, is not a thing to travel along 
the ways without comment. Yet no man 
of all the country round had seen any such 
wonder. He was, and he was not; and 
Learoyd suggested the immediate smash- 
ment as a sacrifice to his ghost. Ortheris 
insisted that all was well. 

“ When Mulvaney goes up the road,” 
said he, “ ’e’s like to go a very long ways 
up, especially when ’e’s so blue drunk as ’e 
is now. But what gits me is ’is not bein’ 


174 Mine Own People 

’card of pullin’ wool of the niggers some- 
where about. That don’t look good. The 
drink must ha’ died out in ’im by this, 
unless ’e’s broke a bank, an’ then — Why 
don’t ’e come back? ’E didn’t ought to ha’ 
gone off without us.” 

Even Ortheris’ heart sunk at the end of 
the seventh day, for half the regiment were 
out scouring the country-sides, and Lea- 
royd had been forced to fight two men who 
hinted openly that Mulvaney had deserted. 
To do him justice, the colonel laughed at 
the notion, even when it was put forward 
by his much-trusted adjutant. 

“ Mulvaney would as soon think of de- 
serting as you would,” said he. “ No; he’s 
either fallen into a mischief among the vil- 
lagers — and yet that isn’t likely, for he’d 
blarney himself out of the pit; or else he 
is engaged on urgent private affairs — some 
stupendous devilment that we shall hear of 
at mess after it has been the round of the 
barrack-room. The worst of it is that I 
shall have to give him twenty-eight days' 
confinement at least for being absent with- 
out leave, just when I most want him to 
lick the new batch of recruits into shape. I 
never knew a man who could pm polish on 
young soldiers as quickly as Mulvaney can. 
How does he do it? ” 

“ With blarney and the buckle-end of a 
belt, sir,” said the adjutant. “ He is worth 


Incarnation of Mulvaney 175 

a couple of non-commissioned officers 
when we are dealing with an Irish draft, 
and the London lads seem to adore him. 
The worst of it is that if he goes to the 
C':lls the other two are neither to hold nor 
to bind till he comes out again. I believe 
Ortheris preaches mutiny on those occa- 
sions, and I know that the mere presence 
of Learoyd mourning for Mulvaney kills 
all the cheerfulness of his room. The ser- 
geants tell me that he allows no man to 
laugh when he feels unhappy. They are a 
queer gang.” 

“ For all that, I wish we had a few more 
of themi I like a well-conducted regi- 
ment, but these pasty-faced, shifty-eyed, 
mealy-mouthed young slouchers from the 
depot worry me sometimes with their offen- 
sive virtue. They don’t seem to have back- 
bone enough to do anything but play cards 
and prowl round the married quarters. I 
believe I’d forgive that old villain on the 
spot if he turned up with any sort of ex- 
planation that I could in decency accept.” 

“ Not likely to be much difficulty about 
that, sir,” said the adjutant. “ Mulvaney’s 
explanations are one degree less wonderful 
than his performances. They say that 
when he was in the Black Tyrone, before 
he came to us, he was discovered on the 
banks of the Liffey trying to sell his 
colonel’s charger to a Donegal dealer as a 


176 Mine Own People 

perfect lady’s hack. Shakbolt commanded 
the Tyrone then.” 

“ Shakbolt must have had apoplexy at 
the thought of his ramping war-horses 
answering to that description. He used to 
buy unbacked devils and tame them by 
starvation. What did Mulvaney say? ” 

“That he was a member of the Society 
for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, 
anxious to ‘ sell the poor baste where he 
would get something to fill out his dim- 
ples.’ Shakbolt laughed, but I fancy that 
was why Mulvaney exchanged to ours.” 

“ I wish he were back,” said the colonel; 
“ for I like him, and believe he likes me.” 

That evening, to cheer our souls, Lea- 
royd, Ortheris and I went into the waste 
to smoke out a porcupine. All the dogs 
attended, but even their clamor — and 
they began to discuss the shortcomings of 
porcupines before they left cantonments — 
could not take us out of ourselves. A 
large, low moon turned the tops of the 
plume grass to silver, and the stunted 
camel-thorn bushes and sour tamarisks into 
the likeness of trooping devils. The smell 
of the sun had not left the earth, and little 
aimless winds, blowing across the rose gar- 
dens to the southward, brought the scent 
of dried roses and water. Our fire once 
started, and the dogs craftily disposed to 
wait the dash of the porcupine, we climbed 


Incarnation of Mulvaney 1 77 

to the top of a rain-scarred hillock of earth, 
and looked across the scrub, seamed with 
cattle-paths, white with the long grass, and 
dotted with spots of level pond-bottom, 
where the snipe would gather in winter. 

“ This,” said Ortheris, with a sigh, as he 
took in the unkempt desolation of it all, 
“ this is sanguinary. This is unusual san- 
guinary. Sort o’ mad country. Like a 
grate when the fire’s put out by the sun.” 
He shaded his eyes against the moonlight. 
“ An’ there’s a loony dancin’ in the middle 
of it all. Quite right. I’d dance, too, if 
I wasn’t so down-heart.” 

There pranced a portent in the face of 
the moon — a huge and ragged spirit of 
the waste, that flapped its wings from afar. 
It had risen out of the earth ; it was coming 
toward us, and its outline was never twice 
the same. The toga, table-cloth, or dress- 
ing-gown, whatever the creature wore, took 
a hundred shapes. Once it stopped on a 
neighboring mound and flung all its legs 
and arms to the winds. 

“ My, but that scarecrow ’as got ’em 
bad!” said Ortheris. “Seems like if ’e 
comes any furder we’ll ’ave to argify with 
’im.” 

Learoyd raised himself from the dirt as 
a bull clears his flanks of the wallow. And 
as a bull bellows, so he, after a short min- 
ute at gaze, gave tongue to the stars. 


178 Mine Own People 


“Mulvaney! Mulvaney! A hoo!” 

Then we yelled all together, and the fig- 
ure dipped into the hollow till, with a crash 
of rending grass, the lost one strode up to 
the light of the fire, and disappeared to 
the waist in a wave of joyous dogs. Then 
Learoyd and Ortheris gave greeting bass 
and falsetto. 

“ You damned fool! ” said they, and sev- 
erally punched him with their fists. 

“Go easy!” he answered, wrapping a 
huge arm around each. “ I would have 
you to know that I am a god, to be treated 
as such — though, by my faith, I fancy I’ve 
got to go to the guard-room just like a 
privit soldier.” 

The latter part of the sentence destroyed 
the suspicions raised by the former. Any 
one would have been justified in regarding 
Mulvaney as mad. He was hatless and 
shoeless, and his shirt and trousers were 
dropping off him. But he wore one won- 
drous garment — a gigantic cloak that fell 
from collar-bone to heels — of pale pink 
silk, wrought all over, in cunningest needle- 
work of hands long since dead, with the 
loves of the Hindoo gods. The monstrous 
figures leaped In and out of the light of the 
fire as he settled the folds round him. 

Ortheris handled the stuff respectfully 
for a moment while I was trying to remem- 
ber where I had seen it before. 




Incarnation of Mulvaney 179 

Then he screamed: “What ’ave you 
done with the palanquin? You’re wearin’ 
the linin’.” 

“ I am,” said the Irishman, “ an’ by the 
same token the ’broidery is scrapin’ me 
hide off. I’ve lived in this sumpshus coun- 
terpane for four days. Me son, I begin to 
ondherstand why the naygur is no use. 
Widout me boots, an’ me trousers like an 
open-work stocking on a gyurl’s leg at a 
dance, I began to feel like a naygur — all 
timorous. Give me a pipe an’ I’ll tell on.” 

He lighted a pipe, resumed his grip of 
his two friends, and rocked to and fro in a 
gale of laughter. 

“ Mulvaney,” said Ortheris, sternly, 
“ ’tain’t no time for laughin’. You’ve 
given Jock an’ me more trouble than you’re 
worth. You ’ave been absent without 
leave, and you’ll go into the cells for that; 
an’ you ’ave come back disgustingly 
dressed, an’ most improper, in the linin’ o’ 
that bloomin’ palanquin. Instid of which 
you laugh. An’ zve thought you was dead 
all the time.” 

“ Bhoys,” said the culprit, still shaking 
gently, “ whin I’ve done my tale you may 
cry if you like, an’ little Orth’ris here can 
thrample my insides out. Ha’ done an’ 
listen. My performinces have been stupen- 
jus; my luck has been the blessed luck of 
the British army — an’ there’s no better 


i8o Mine Own People 

than that. I went out drunk an’ drinking 
in the palanquin, and I have come back a 
pink god. Did any of you go to Dearsley 
afther my time was up? He was at the 
bottom of ut all.” 

“ Ah said so,” murmured Learoyd. 
“ To-morrow ah’ll smash t’ face in upon his 
head.” 

“Ye will not. Dearsley’s a jool av a 
man. Afther Orth’ris had put me into the 
palanquin an’ the six bearer-men were 
gruntin’ down the road, I tuk thought to 
mock Dearsley for that fight. So I tould 
thim : ‘ Go to the embankment,’ and there, 
bein’ most amazin’ full, I shtuck my head 
out av the concern an’ passed compliments 
wid Dearsley. I must ha’ miscalled him 
outrageous, for whin I am that way the 
power of the tongue comes on me. I can 
bare remimber tellin’ him that his mouth 
opened endways like the mouth of a skate, 
which was thrue afther Learoyd had han- 
dled ut ; an’ I clear remimber his taking no 
manner nor matter of offense, but givin’ 
me a big dhrink of beer. ’Twas the beer 
that did the thrick, for I crawled back into 
the palanquin, steppin’ on me right ear wid 
me left foot, an’ thin I slept like the dead. 
Wanst I half roused, an’ begad the noise 
in my head was tremenjus — roarin’ an’ 
poundin’ an’ rattlin’ such as was quite new 
to me. ‘ Mother av mercy,’ thinks I, 


Incarnation of Mulvaney 1 8 1 

‘ phwat a concertina I will have on my 
shoulders whin I wake ! ’ An’ wid that I 
curls myself up to sleep before ut should 
get hould on me. Bhoys, that noise was 
not dhrink, ’twas the rattle av a train! ” 

There followed an impressive pause. 

“ Yes, he had put me on a thrain — put 
me, palanquin an’ all, an’ six black assas- 
sins av his own coolies that was in his 
nefarious confidence, on the flat av a bal- 
last-truck, and we were rowlin’ and bowlin’ 
along to Benares. Glory be that I did not 
wake up then an’ introjuce myself to the 
coolies. As I was sayin’, I slept for the 
better part av a day an’ a night. But re- 
mimber you, that that man Dearsley had 
packed me off on one av his material 
thrains to Benares, all for to make me over- 
stay my leave an’ get me into the cells.” 

The explanation was an eminently ra- 
tional one. Benares was at least ten hours 
by rail from the cantonments, and nothing 
in the world could have saved Mulvaney 
from arrest as a deserter had he appeared 
there in the apparel of his orgies. Dears- 
ley had not forgotten to take revenge. 
Learoyd, drawing back a little, began to 
place soft blows over selected portions of 
Mulvaney’s body. His thoughts were 
away on the embankment, and they medi- 
tated evil for Dearsley. Mulvaney con- 
tinued: “Whin I was full awake, the 


1 82 Mine Own People 

palanquin was set down in a street, I sus- 
picioned, for I could hear people passin’ 
and talkin’. But I knew well I was far 
from home. There is a queer smell upon 
our cantonments — smell av dried earth 
and brick-kilns wid whiffs av a cavalry 
stable-litter. This place smelt marigold 
flowers an’ bad water, an’ wanst somethin’ 
alive came an’ blew heavy with his muzzle 
at the chink of the shutter. ‘ It’s in a vil- 
lage I am,’ thinks I to myself, ‘ an’ the 
parochial buffalo is investigatin’ the palan- 
quin.’ But anyways I had no desire to 
move. Only lie still whin you’re in for- 
eign parts) an’ the standin’ luck av the 
British army will carry ye through. That 
is an epigram. I made ut. 

“ Thin a lot av whisperin’ devils sur- 
rounded the palanquin. ‘ Take ut up,’ says 
wan man. ‘ But who’ll pay us?’ says an- 
other. ‘ The Maharanee’s minister, av 
course,’ sez the man. ‘ Oho! ’ sez I to my- 
self ; ‘ I’m a quane in me own right, wid a 
minister to pay me expenses. I’ll be an 
emperor if I lie still long enough. But 
this is no village I’ve struck.’ I lay quiet, 
but I gummed me right eye to a crack av 
the shutters, an’ I saw that the whole street 
was crammed wid palanquins an’ horses an’ 
a sprinklin’ av naked priests, all yellow 
powder an’ tigers’ tails. But I may tell 
you, Orth’ris, an’ you, Learoyd, that av 


Incarnation of Mulvaney 183 

all the palanquins ours was the most impe- 
rial an’ magnificent. Now, a palanquin 
means a native lady all the world over, ex- 
cept whin a soldier av the quane happens 
to be takin’ a ride. ‘Women an’ priest! ’ 
sez I. ‘ Your father’s son is in the right 
pew this time, Terence. There will be pro- 
ceedin’s.’ Six black devils in pink muslin 
tuk up the palanquin, an’ oh! but the 
rowlin’ an’ the rockin’ made me sick. Thin 
we got fair jammed among the palanquins 
— not more than fifty av them — an’ we 
grated an’ bumped like Queenstown pota- 
to-sacks in a runnin’ tide. I cud hear the 
women giglin’ and squirmin’ in their palan- 
quins, but mine was the royal equipage. 
They made way for ut, an’, begad, the pink 
muslin men o’ mine were howlin’, ‘ Room 
for the Maharanee av Gokral-Seetarun.’ 
Do you know av the lady, sorr? ” 

“Yes,” said I. “She is a very estima- 
ble old queen of the Central India States, 
and they say she is fat. How on earth 
could she go to Benares without all the city 
knowing her palanquin?” 

“ ’Twas the eternal foolishness av the 
naygur men. They saw the palanquin 
lying loneful an’ forlornsome, an’ the 
beauty of ut, after Dearsley’s men had 
dhropped ut an’ gone away, an’ they gave ut 
the best name that occurred to thim. Quite 
right too. For aught we know, the old lady 


184 Mine Own People 

was travel in’ incog . — like me. I’m glad to 
hear she’s fat. I was no light-weight my- 
self, an’ my men were mortial anxious to 
dhrop me under a great big archway pro- 
miscuously ornamented wid the most im- 
proper carvin’s an’ cuttin’s I iver saw. 
Begad! they made me blush — like a 
maharanee.” 

“ The temple of the Prithi-Devi,” I mur- 
mured, remembering the monstrous hor- 
rors of that sculptured archway at Benares. 

“ Pretty Devilskins, savin’ your presence, 
sorr. There was nothin’ pretty about ut, 
except me! ’Twas all half dhark, an’ whin 
the coolies left they shut a big black gate 
behind av us, an’ half a company av fat 
yellow priests began pully-haulin’ the 
palanquins into dharker place yet — a big 
stone hall full av pillars an’ gods an’ in- 
cense an’ all manner av similar thruck. 
The gate disconcerted me, for I perceived 
I wud have to go forward to get out, my 
retreat bein’ cut off. By the same token, 
a good priest makes a bad palanquin- 
coolie. Begad! they nearly turned me in- 
side out dragging the palanquin to the 
temple. Now the disposishin av the forces 
inside was this way. The Maharanee av 
Gokral-Seetarun — that was me — lay by 
the favor of Providence on the far left flank 
behind the dhark av a pillar carved with 
elephants’ heads. The remainder av the 


Incarnation of Mulvaney 185 

palanquins was in a big half circle facing 
into the biggest, fattest, and most amazin’ 
she-god that iver I dreamed av. Her head 
ran up into the black above us, an’ her feet 
stuck out in the light av a little fire av 
melted butter that a priest was feedin’ out 
av a butter-dish. Thin a man began to 
sing an’ play on somethin’, back in the 
dhark, an’ ’twas a queer song, Ut made 
my hair lift on the back av my neck. Thin 
the doors av all the palanquins slid back, 
an’ the women bundled out. I saw what 
I’ll never see again. ’Twas more glorious 
than transformations at a pantomime, for 
they was in pink, an’ blue, an’ silver, an’ 
red, an’ grass-green, wid diamonds, an’ 
imeralds, an’ great red rubies. I never saw 
the like, an’ i never will again.” 

“ Seeing that in all probability you were 
watching the wives and daughters of most 
of the kings of India, the chances are that 
you won’t,” I said, for it was dawning upon 
me that Mulvaney had stumbled upon a big 
queen’s praying at Benares. 

“ I niver will,” he said, mournfully. 

“ That sight doesn’t come twict to any 
man. It made me ashamed to watch. A 
fat priest knocked at my door. I didn’t 
think he’d have the insolence to disturb the 
Maharanee av Gokral-Seetarun, so I lay 
still. ‘ The old cow’s asleep,’ sez he to an- 
other. ‘ Let her be,’ sez that. ‘ ’Twill be 


1 86 Mine Own People 

long before she has a calf! ’ I might ha’ 
known before he spoke that all a woman 
prays for in Injia — an’ for the matter o’ 
that in England too — is childher. That 
made me more sorry I’d come, me bein’, 
as you well know, a childless man. 

“ They prayed, an’ the butter-fires blazed 
up an’ the incense turned everything blue, 
an’ between that an’ the fires the women 
looked as tho’ they were all ablaze an’ 
twinklin’. They took hold of the she-god’s 
knees, they cried out, an’ they threw them- 
selves about, an’ that world-without-end- 
amen music was dhrivin’ thim mad. 
Mother av Hiven! how they cried, an’ the 
ould she-god grinnin’ above them all so 
scornful! The dhrink was dyin’ out in me 
fast, an’ I was thinkin’ harder than 
the thoughts wud go through my head — 
thinkin’ how to get out, an’ all man- 
ner of nonsense as well. The women 
were rockin’ in rows, their di’mond 
belts clickin’, an’ the tears runnin’ out be- 
tune their hands, an’ the lights were goin’ 
lower and dharker. Thin there was a blaze 
like lightnin’ from the roof, an’ that showed 
me the inside av the palanquin, an’ at the 
end where my foot was stood the livin’ spit 
an’ image o’ myself worked on the linin’. 
This man here, it was.” 

He hunted in the folds of his pink cloak, 
ran a hand under one, and thrust into the 


Incarnation of Mulvaney 187 

fire-light a foot-long embroidered present- 
ment of the great god Krishna playing on 
a flute. The heavy jowl, the staring eyes, 
and the blue-black mustache of the god 
made up a far-off resemblance to Mul- 
vaney. 

“ The blaze was gone in a wink, but the 
whole schame came to me thin. I believe 
I was mad, too. I slid the off-shutter open 
an’ rowled out into the dhark behind the 
elephant-head pillar, tucked up my trousies 
to my knee, slipped off my boots, and took 
a general hould av all the pink linin’ av the 
palanquin. Glory be, ut ripped out like a 
woman’s driss when you thread on ut at a 
Sargent’s ball, an’ a bottle came with ut. I 
tuk the bottle, an’ the next minut I was out 
av the dhark av the pillar, the pink linin’ 
wrapped round me most graceful, the music 
thunderin’ like kettle-drums, an’ a cowld 
draft blowin’ round my bare legs. By this 
hand that did ut, I was Krishna tootlin’ on 
the flute — the god that the rig’mental 
chaplain talks about. A sweet sight I must 
ha’ looked. I knew my eyes were big and 
my face was wax-white, an’ at the worst I 
must ha’ looked like a ghost. But they 
took me for the livin’ god. The music 
stopped, and the women were dead dumb, 
an’ I crooked my legs like a shepherd on 
a china basin, an’ I did the ghost-waggle 
with my feet as I had done at the rig’mental 


I 88 Mine Own People 

theater many times, an’ slid across the tem- 
ple in front av the she-god, tootlin’ on the 
beer-bottle.” 

“Wot did you toot?” demanded 
Ortheris. 

“Me? Oh!” Mulvaney sprung up, 
suiting the action to the word, and sliding 
gravely in front of us, a dilapidated deity 
in the half light. “ I sung: 

“ ‘ Only say 

You’ll be Mrs. Brallaghan, 

Don’t say nay. 

Charmin’ Juley Callaghan.’ 

I didn’t know my own voice when I sung. 
An’ oh! ’twas pitiful to see the women. 
The darlin’s were down on their faces. 
Whin I passed the last wan I could see 
her poor little fingers workin’ one in an- 
other as if she wanted to touch my feet. 
So I threw the tail of this pink overcoat 
over her head for the greater honor, an’ 
slid into the dhark on the other side of 
the temple, and fetched up in the arms av 
a big fat priest. All I wanted was to get 
away clear. So I tuk him by his greasy 
throat an’ shut the speech out av him. 
‘Out!’ sez I. ‘Which way, ye fat 
heathen?’ ‘Oh!’ sez he. ‘Man,’ sez 1. 
‘ White man, soldier man, common soldier 
man. Where is the back door? ’ ‘ This 

way,’ sez my fat friend, duckin’ behind a 
big bull-god an’ divin’ into a passage. 


Incarnation of Mulvaney 189 

Thin I remimbered that I must ha’ made 
the miraculous reputation of that temple for 
the next fifty years. ‘Not so fast,’ I sez, 
an’ I held out both my hands wid a wink. 
That ould thief smiled like a father. I took 
him by the back av the neck in case he 
should be wishful to put a knife into me un- 
beknownst, an’ I ran him up an’ down the 
passage twice to collect his sensibilities. 

‘ Be quiet,’ sez he, in English. ‘ Now you 
talk sense,’ I sez. ‘ Fhwat’ll you give me 
for the use of that most iligant palanquin 
I have no time to take away? ’ ‘ Don’t 

tell,’ sez he. ‘ Is ut like? ’ sez I. ‘ But ye 
might give me my railway fare. I’m far 
from my home, an’ I’ve done you a ser- 
vice.’ Bhoys, ’tis a good thing to be a 
priest. The ould man niver throubled 
himself to draw from a bank. As I will 
prove to you subsequint, he philandered all 
round the slack av his clothes and began 
dribblin’ ten-rupee notes, old gold mohurs, 
and rupees into my hand till I could hould 
no more.” 

“You lie!” said Ortheris. “You’re 
mad or sunstrook. A native* don’t give 
coin unless you cut it out av ’im. ’Tain’t 
nature.” 

“ Then my lie an’ my sunstroke is con- 
cealed under that lump av sod yonder,” 
retorted Mulvaney, unruffled, nodding 
across the scrub. “ An’ there’s a dale more 


190 Mine Own People 

in nature than your squidgy little legs have 
iver taken you to, Orth’ris, me son. Four 
hundred and thirty-four rupees by my 
reckonin’, an’ a big fat gold necklace that 
I took from him as a remimbrancer.” 

“ An’ ’e give it to you for love? ” said 
Ortheris, 

“We were alone in that passage. Maybe 
I was a trifle too pressin’, but considher 
fwhat I had done for the good av the tem- 
ple and the iverlastin’ joy av those women. 
’Twas cheap at the price. I would ha’ 
taken more if I could ha’ found it. I 
turned the ould man upside down at the 
last, but he was milked dhry. Thin he 
opened a door in another passage, an’ I 
found myself up to my knees in Benares 
river-water, an’ bad smellin’ ut is. More 
by token I had come out on the river line 
close to the burnin’-ghat and contagious 
to a cracklin’ corpse. This was in the 
heart av the night, for I had been four 
hours in the temple. There was a crowd 
av boats tied up, so I tuk wan an’ wint 
across the river. Thin I came home, lyin’ 
up by day.” 

“ How on earth did you manage? ” I 
said. 

“ How did Sir Frederick Roberts get 
from Cabul to Candahar? He marched, 
an’ he niver told how near he was to 
breakin’ down. That’s why he is phwat 


Incarnation of Mulvaney 1 9 1 

he is. An’ now ” — Mulvaney yawned 
portentously — “ now I will go and give 
myself up for absince widout leave. It’s 
eight-an’-twenty days an’ the rough end of 
the colonel’s tongue in orderly-room, any 
way you look at ut. But ’tis cheap at the 
price.” 

“ Mulvaney,” said I, softly, “ if there hap- 
pens to be any sort of excuse that the 
colonel can in any way accept, I have a 
notion that you’ll get nothing more than 
the dressing down. The new recruits are 
in, and — ” 

“ Not a word more, sorr. Is ut excuses 
the ould man wants? ’Tis not my way, 
but he shall have thim.” And he flapped 
his way to cantonments, singing lustily: 

“ So they sent a corp’ril’s file, 

And they put me in the guyard room, 

For conduce unbecomin’ of a soldier.” 

Therewith he surrendered himself to the 
joyful and almost weeping guard, and was 
made much of by his fellows. But to the 
colonel he said that he had been smitten 
with sunstroke and had lain insensible on 
a villager’s cot for untold hours, and be- 
tween laughter and good-will the affair was 
smoothed over, so that he could next day 
teach the new recruits how to “ fear God, 
honor the queen, shoot straight, and keep 
clean.” 


THE MAN WHO WAS, 


Let it be clearly understood 'that the 
Russian is a delightful person till he tucks 
his shirt in. As an Oriental he is charm- 
ing. It is only when he insists upon being 
treated as the most easterly of Western peo- 
ples, instead of the most westerly of l^st- 
erns, that he becomes a racial anomaly ex- 
tremely difficult to handle. The host never 
knows which side of his nature is going to 
turn up next. 

Dirkovitch was a Russian — a Russian 
of the Russians, as he said — who appeared 
to get his bread by serving the czar as an 
officer in a Cossack regiment, and corre- 
sponding for a Russian newspaper with a 
name that was never twice the same. He 
was a handsome young Oriental, with a 
taste for wandering through unexplored 
portions of the earth, and he arrived in In- 
dia from nowhere in particular. At least 
no living man could ascertain whether it 
was by way of Balkh, Budukhshan, Chitral, 
Beloochistan, Nepaul, or anywhere else. 

192 


The Man Who Was 193 

The Indian government, being in an un- 
usually affable mood, gave orders that he 
was to be civilly treated, and shown every- 
thing that was to be seen; so he drifted, 
talking bad English and worse French, 
from one city to another till he foregath- 
ered with her Majesty’s White Hussars in 
the city of Peshawur, which stands at the 
mouth of that narrow sword-cut in the hills 
that men call the Khyber Pass. He was 
undoubtedly an officer, and he was deco- 
rated, after the manner of the Russians, 
wdth little enameled crosses, and he could 
talk, and (though this has nothing to do 
with his merits) he had been given up as a 
hopeless task or case by the Black Tyrones, 
who, individually and collectively, with hot 
whisky and honey, mulled brandy and 
mixed drinks of all kinds, had striven in 
all hospitality to make him drunk. And 
w’hen the Black Tyrones, who are exclu- 
sively Irish, fail to disturb the peace of 
head of a foreigner, that foreigner is cer- 
tain to be a superior man. This was the 
argument of the Black Tyrones, but they 
were ever an unruly and self-opinionated 
regiment, and they allowed junior subal- 
terns of four years’ service to choose their 
wines. The spirits were always purchased 
by the colonel and a committee of majors. 
And a regiment that would so behave may 
be respected but can not be loved. 


194 Mine Own People 

The White Hussars were as conscien- 
tious in choosing their wine as in charg- 
ing the enemy. There was a brandy that 
had been purchased by a cultured colonel 
a few years after the battle of Waterloo. It 
has been maturing ever since, and it was 
a marv’elous brandy at the purchasing. 
The memory of that liquor would cause 
men to weep as they lay dying in the teak 
forests of Upper Burmah or the slime of 
the Irrawaddy. And there was a port 
which was notable; and there was a cham- 
pagne of an obscure brand, which always 
came to mess without any labels, because 
the White Hussars wished none to know 
where the source of supply might be found. 
The officer on whose head the champagne- 
choosing lay was forbidden the use of to- 
bacco for six weeks previous to sampling. 

This particularity of detail is necessary 
to emphasize the fact that that champagne, 
that port, and, above all, that brandy — 
the green and yellow and white liqueurs did 
not count — was placed at the absolute dis- 
position of Dirkovitch, and he enjoyed 
himself hugely — even more than among 
the Black Tyrones. 

But he remained distressingly European 
through it all. The White Hussars were 
— “ My dear true friends,” “ Fellow-soldiers 
glorious,” and “ Brothers inseparable.” He 
would unburden himself by the hour on 


The Man Who Was 195 

the glorious future that awaited the com* 
bined arms of England and Russia when 
their hearts and their territories should run 
side by side, and the great mission of civil- 
izing Asia should begin. That was unsat- 
isfactory, because Asia is not going to be 
civilized, after the methods of the West. 
There is too much Asia, and she is too old. 
You can not reform a lady of many lovers, 
and Asia has been insatiable in her flirta- 
tions aforetime. She will never attend 
Sunday-school, or learn to vote save with 
swords for tickets. 

Dirkovitch knew this as well as any one 
else, but it suited him to talk special-cor- 
respondently and to make himself as genial 
as he could. Now and then he volunteered 
a little, a very little, information about his 
own Sotnia of Cossacks, left apparently to 
look after themselves somewhere at the 
back of beyond. He had done rough work 
in Central Asia, and had seen rather more 
help-yourself fighting than most men of his 
years. But he was careful never to betray 
his superiority, and more than careful to 
praise on all occasions the appearance, drill, 
uniform, and organization of her Majesty’s 
White Hussars. And, indeed, they were 
a regiment to be admired. When Mrs. 
Durgan, widow of the late Sir John Dur- 
gan, arrived in their station, and after a 
short time had been proposed to by every 


196 Mine Own People 

single man at mess, she put the public 
sentiment very neatly when she explained 
that they were all so nice that unless she 
could marry them all, including the colonel 
and some majors who were already mar- 
ried, she was not going to content herself 
with one of them. Wherefore she wedded 
a little man in a rifle regiment — being by 
nature contradictious — and the White 
Hussars were going to wear crape on their 
arms, but compromised by attending the 
wedding in full force, and lining the aisle 
with unutterable reproach. She had jilted 
them all — from Basset-Holmer, the senior 
captain, to Little Mildred, the last subal- 
tern, and he could have given her four 
thousand a year and a title. He was a vis- 
count, and on his arrival the mess had said 
he had better go into the Guards, because 
they were all sons of large grocers and 
small clothiers in the Hussars, but Mildred 
begged very hard to be allowed to stay, and 
behaved so prettily that he was forgiven, 
and became a man, which is much more 
important than being any sort of viscount. 

The only persons who did not share the 
general regard for the White Hussars were 
a few thousand gentlemen of Jewish extrac- 
tion who lived across the border, and an- 
swered to the name of Pathan. They had 
only met the regiment offlcially, and for 
something less than twenty minutes, but 


The Man Who Wks 197 

the interview, which was complicated with 
many casualties, had filled them with preju- 
dice. They even called the White Hussars 
“ children of the devil,” and sons of persons 
whom it would be perfectly impossible to 
meet in decent society. Yet they were not 
above making their aversion fill their 
money-belts. The regiment possessed car- 
bines, beautiful Martini-Henry carbines, 
that would cob a bullet into an enemy’s 
camp at one thousand yards, and were even 
handier than the long rifle. Therefore they 
were coveted all along the border, and, 
since demand inevitably breeds supply, 
they were supplied at the risk of life and 
limb for exactly their weight in coined sil- 
ver — seven and one half pounds of rupees, 
or sixteen pounds and a few shillings each, 
reckoning the rupee at par. They were 
stolen at night by snaky-haired thieves that 
crawled on their stomachs under the nose 
of the sentries ; they disappeared mys- 
teriously from arm-racks; and in the hot 
weather, when all the doors and windows 
were open, they vanished like puffs of their 
own smoke. The border people desired 
them first for their own family vendettas, 
and then for contingencies. But in the 
long cold nights of the Northern Indian 
winter they were stolen most extensively. 
The traffic of murder was liveliest among 
the hills at that season, and prices ruled 


198 Mine Own People 

high. The regimental guards were first 
doubled and then trebled. A trooper does 
not much care if he loses a weapon — gov- 
ernment must make it good — but he 
deeply resents the loss of his sleep. The 
regiment grew very angry, and one night- 
thief who managed to limp away bears the 
visible marks of their anger upon him to 
this hour. That incident stopped the bur- 
glaries for a time, and the guards were re- 
duced accordingly, and the regiment de- 
voted itself to polo with unexpected results, 
for it beat by two goals to one that very 
terrible polo corps, the Lushkar Light 
Horse, though the latter had four ponies 
apiece for a short hour’s fight, as well as 
a native officer who played like a lambent 
flame across the ground. 

Then they gave a dinner to celebrate the 
event. The Lushkar team came, and 
Dirkovitch came, in the fullest full uniform 
of a Cossack officer, which is as full as a 
dressing-gown, and was introduced to the 
Lushkars, and opened his eyes as he re- 
garded them. They were lighter men 
than the Hussars, and they carried them- 
selves with the swing that is the peculiar 
right of the Punjab frontier force and all 
irregular horse. Like everything else in 
the service, it has to be learned ; but, unlike 
many things, it is never forgotten, and re- 
mains on the body till death. 


The Man Who Was 199 

The great beam-roofed mess-room of the 
White Hussars was a sight to be remem- 
bered. All the mess-plate was on the long 
table — the same table that had served up 
the bodies of five dead officers in a forgot- 
ten fight long and long ago — the dingy, 
battered standards faced the door of en- 
trance, clumps of winter roses lay between 
the silver candlesticks, the portraits of em- 
inent officers deceased looked down on 
their successors from between the heads of 
sambhur, nilghai, maikhor, and, pride of 
ail the mess, two grinning snow-leopards 
that had cost Basset-Holmer four months’ 
leave that he might have spent in England 
instead of on the road to Thibet, and the 
daily risk of his life on ledge, snow-slide, 
and glassy grass-slope. 

The servants, in spotless white muslin 
and the crest of their regiments on the 
brow of their turbans, waited behind their 
masters, who were clad in the scarlet and 
gold of the White Hussars and the cream 
and silver of the Lushkar Light Horse. 
Dirkovitch’s dull green uniform was the 
only dark spot at the board, but his big 
onyx eyes made up for it. He was frater- 
nizing effusively with the captain of the 
Lushkar team, who was wondering how 
many of Dirkovitch’s Cossacks his own 
long, lathy down-coomtrymen could ac- 


200 Mine Own People 

count for in a fair charge. But one does 
not speak of these things openly. 

The talk rose higher and higher, and 
the regimental band played between the 
courses, as is the immemorial custom, till 
all tongues ceased for a moment with the 
removal of the dinner slips and the First 
Toast of Obligation, when the colonel, ris- 
ing, said: “Mr. Vice, the Queen,” and 
Little Mildred from the bottom of the table 
answered: “The Queen, God bless her!” 
and the big spurs clanked as the big men 
heaved themselves up and drank the 
Queen, upon whose pay they were falsely 
supposed to pay their mess-bills. That sac- 
rament of the mess never grows old, and 
never ceases to bring a lump into the throat 
of the listener wherever he be, by land or 
by sea. Dirkovitch rose with his “ brothers 
glorious,” but he could not understand. 
No one but an officer can understand what 
the toast means; and the bulk have more 
sentiment than comprehension. It all 
comes to the same in the end, as the enemy 
said when he was wriggling on a lance- 
point. Immediately after the little silence 
that follows on the ceremony there entered 
the native officer who had played for the 
Lushkar team. He could not of course eat 
with the alien, but he came in at dessert, all 
six feet of him, with the blue-and-silver tur- 
ban atop and the big black top-boots below. 


The Man Who Was 201 

The mess rose joyously as he thrust for- 
ward the hilt of his saber, in token of fealty, 
for the colonel of the White Hussars to 
touch, and dropped into a vacant chair 
amid shouts of '‘Rung ho! Hira Singh!” 
(which being translated means “ Go in and 
win! ”). “ Did I whack you over the knee, 

old man?” “ Ressaidar Sahib, what the 
devil made you play that kicking pig of a 
pony in the last ten minutes?” “ Shabash, 
Ressaidar Sahib!” Then the voice of the 
colonel: “The health of Ressaidar Hira 
Singh! ” 

After the shouting had died away Hira 
Singh rose to reply, for he was the cadet 
of a royal house, the son of a king’s son, 
and knew what was due on these occasions. 
Thus he spoke in the vernacular: 

“ Colonel Sahib and officers of this regi- 
ment, much honor have you done me. 
This will I remember. We came down 
from afar to play you ; but we were beaten.” 
(“ No fault of yours, Ressaidar Sahib. 
Played on your own ground, y’ know. 
Your ponies were cramped from the rail- 
way. Don’t apologize.”) “ Therefore per- 
haps we will come again if it be so 
ordained.” (“Hear! Hear, hear, indeed! 
Bravo! H’sh! ”) “Then we will play you 
afresh ” (“ Happy to meet you ”), “ till there 
are left no feet upon our ponies. Thus far 
for sport.” He dropped one hand on his 


202 Mine Own People 

sword-hilt, and his eye wandered to Dirko- 
vitch lolling back in his chair. “ But if by 
the will of God there arises any other game 
which is not the polo game, then be as- 
sured, Colonel Sahib and officers, that we 
shall play it out side by side, though they ” 
— again his eye sought Dirkovitch — 
“ though they, I say, have fifty ponies to 
our one horse.” And with a deep-mouthed 
Rimg ho! that rang like a musket-butt on 
flag-stones, he sat down amid shoutings. 

Dirkovitch, who had devoted himself 
steadily to the brandy — the terrible 
brandy aforementioned — did not under- 
stand, nor did the expurgated translations 
offered to him at all convey the point. De- 
cidedly the native officer’s was the speech 
of the evening, and the clamor might have 
continued to the dawn had it not been 
broken by the noise of a shot without that 
sent every man feeling at his defenseless 
left side. It is notable that Dirkovitch 

reached back,” after the American fash- 
ion — a gesture that set the captain of the 
Lushkar team wondering how Cossack offi- 
cers were armed at mess. Then there was 
a scuffle and a yell of pain. 

“ Carbine-stealing again! ” said the adju- 
tant, calmly sinking back in his chair. 

This comes of reducing the guards. I 
hope the sentries have killed him.” 

The feet of armed men pounded on the 


The Man Who Was 203 

veranda flags, and it sounded as though 
something was being dragged. 

“ Why don’t they put him in the cells 
till the morning?” said the colonel, testily. 
“ See if they’ve damaged him, sergeant.” 

The mess-sergeant fled out into the dark- 
ness, and returned with two troopers and 
a corporal, all very much perplexed. 

“ Caught a man stealin’ carbines, sir,” 
said the corporal. “ Leastways ’e was 
crawlin’ toward the barricks, sir, past the 
main-road sentries; an’ the sentry ’e says, 
sir — ” 

The limp heap of rags upheld by the 
three men groaned. Never was seen so 
destitute and demoralized an Afghan. He 
was turbanless, shoeless, caked with dirt, 
and all but dead with rough handling. 
Hira Singh started slightly at the sound of 
the man’s pain. Dirkovitch took another 
liqueur glass of brandy. 

“ What does the sentry say? ” said the 
colonel. 

“ Sez he speaks English, sir,” said the 
corporal. 

“ So you brought him into mess instead 
of handing him over to the sergeant! If 
he spoke all the tongues of the Pentecost, 
you’ve no business — ” 

Again the bundle groaned and muttered. 
Little Mildred had risen from his place to 


204 Mine Own People 

inspect. He jumped back as though he 
had been shot. 

“ Perhaps it would be better, sir, to send 
the men away,” said he to the colonel, for 
he was a much-privileged subaltern. He 
put his arms round the rag-bownd horror 
as he spoke, and dropped him into a chair. 
It may not have been explained that the 
littleness of Mildred lay in his being six 
feet four, and big in proportion. The cor- 
poral, seeing that an officer was disposed 
to look after the capture, and that the 
colonel’s eye was beginning to blaze, 
promptly removed himself and his men. 
The mess was left alone with the carbine 
thief, who laid his head on the table and 
wept bitterly, hopelessly, and inconsolably, 
as little children weep. 

Hira Singh leaped to his feet with a 
long-drawn vernacular oath. “ Colonel 
Sahib,” said he, “ that man is no Afghan, 
for they weep ‘ Ai! Ai! ’ Nor is he of 
Hindoostan, for they weep ‘ Oh! Ho! ’ He 
weeps after the fashion of the white men, 
who say ‘ Ow! Ow! ’ ” 

“ Now where the dickens did you get 
that knowledge, Hira Singh?” said the 
captain of the Lushkar team. 

“ Hear him ! ” said Hira Singh, simply, 
pointing at the crumpled figure, that wept 
as though it would never cease. 


The Man Who Was 205 

“ He said, ‘ My God! ’ ” said Little Mil- 
dred. “ I heard him say it.” 

The colonel and the mess-room looked 
at the man in silence. It is a horrible thing 
to hear a man cry. A woman can sob 
from the top of her palate, or her lips, or 
anywhere else, but a man cries from his 
diaphragm, and it rends him to pieces. 
Also, the exhibition causes the throat of 
the on-looker to close at the top. 

“ Poor devil I ” said the colonel, cough- 
ing tremendously. “ We ought to send 
him to hospital. He’s been mishandled.” 

Now the adjutant loved his rifles. They 
were to him as his grandchildren — the men 
standing in the first place. He grunted re- 
belliously : “ I can understand an Afghan 

stealing, because he’s made that way. But 
I can’t understand his crying. That makes 
it worse.” 

The brandy must have affected Dirko- 
vitch, for he lay back in his chair and stared 
at the ceiling. There was nothing special 
in the ceiling beyond a shadow as of a huge 
black coffin. Owing to some peculiarity 
in the construction of the mess-room, this 
shadow was always thrown when the can- 
dies were lighted. It never disturbed the 
digestion of the White Hussars. They 
were, in fact, rather proud of it. 

“ Is he going to cry all night,” said the 
colonel, “ or are we supposed to sit up with 


2o6 Mine Own People 

Little Mildred’s guest until he feels 
better? ” 

The man in the chair threw up his head 
and stared at the mess. Outside, the 
wheels of the first of those bidden to the 
festivities crunched the roadway. 

“ Oh, my God! ” said the man in the 
chair, and every soul in the mess rose to 
his feet. Then the Lushkar captain did a 
deed for which he ought to have been given 
the Victoria Cross — distinguished gallan- 
try in a fight against overwhelming curi- 
osity. He picked up his team with his 
eyes as the hostess picks up the ladies at 
the opportune moment, and pausing only 
by the colonel’s chair to say; “This isn’t 
oiir affair, you know, sir,” led the team 
into the veranda and the gardens. Hira 
Singh was the last, and he looked at Dirko- 
vitch as he moved. But Dirkovitch had 
departed into a brandy paradise of his own. 
His lips moved without sound, and he was 
studying the coffin on the ceiling. 

“ White — white all over,” said Basset- 
Holmer, the adjutant. “ What a perni- 
cious renegade he must be! I wonder 
where he came from? ” 

The colonel shook the man gently by 
the arm, and “Who are you?” said he. 

There was no answer. The man stared 
round the mess-room and smiled in the 
colonel’s face. Little Mildred, who was 


The Man Who Was 207 

always more of a woman than a man till 
“ Boot and saddle ” was sounded, repeated 
the question in a voice that would have 
drawn confidences from a geyser. The 
man only smiled. Dirkovitch, at the far 
end of the table, slid gently from his chair 
to the floor. No son of Adam, in this 
present imperfect world, can mix the Hus- 
sars’ champagne with the Hussars’ brandy 
by five and eight glasses of each without 
remembering the pit whence he has been 
digged and descended thither. The band 
began to play the tune with which the 
White Hussars, from the date of their for- 
mation, preface all their functions. They 
would sooner be disbanded than abandon 
that tune. It is a part of their system. 
The man straightened himself in his chair 
and drummed on the table with his fingers. 

“ I don’t see why we should entertain 
lunatics,” said the colonel ; “ call a guard 
and send him off to the cells. We’ll look 
into the business in the morning. Give 
him a glass of wine first, though.” 

Little Mildred filled a sherry glass with 
the brandy and thrust it over to the man. 
He drank, and the tune rose louder, and 
he straightened himself yet more. Then 
he put out his long-taloned hands to a piece 
of plate opposite and fingered it lovingly. 
There was a mystery connected with that 
piece of plate in the shape of a spring, 


2o8 Mine Own People 

which converted what was a seven- 
branched candlestick, three springs each 
side and one in the middle, into a sort of 
wheel-spoke candelabrum. He found the 
spring, pressed it, and laughed weakly. 
He rose from his chair and inspected a pic- 
ture on the wall, then moved on to another 
picture, the mess watching him without a 
word. When he came to the mantel-piece 
he shook his head and seemed distressed. 
A piece of plate representing a mounted 
hussar in full uniform caught his eye. He 
pointed to it, and then to the mantel-piece, 
with inquiry in his eyes. 

“ What is it — oh, what is it? ” said Lit- 
tle Mildred. Then, as a mother might 
speak to a child, “ That is a horse — yes, 
a horse.” 

Very slowly came the answer, in a thick, 
passionless guttural: “Yes, I — have seen. 
But — where is the horse?” 

He could have heard the hearts of the 
mess beating as the men drew back to give 
the stranger full room in his wanderings. 
There was no question of calling the 
guard. 

Again he spoke, very slowly: “Where 
is our horse? ” 

There is no saying what happened after 
that. There is but one horse in the White 
Hussars, and his portrait hangs outside the 
door of the mess-room. He is the piebald 


The Man Who Was 209 

drum-horse, the king of the regimental 
band, that served the regiment for seven 
and thirty years, and in the end was 
shot for old age. Half the mess tore 
the thing down from its place and 
thrust it into the man’s hands. He 
placed it above the mantel-piece; it clat- 
tered on the ledge, as his poor hands 
dropped it, and he staggered toward the 
bottom of the table, falling into Mildred’s 
chair. The band began to play the “ River 
of Years ” waltz, and the laughter from the 
gardens came into the tobacco-scented 
mess-room. But nobody, even the young- 
est, was thinking of waltzes. They all 
spoke to one another something after this 
fashion: “The drum-horse hasn’t hung 
over the mantel-piece since ’67.” “ How 

does he know? ” “ Mildred, go and speak 

to him again.” “ Colonel, what are you 
going to do? ” “ Oh, dry up, and give the 

poor devil a chance to pull himself to- 
gether! ” “ It isn’t possible, anyhow. The 

man’s a lunatic.” 

Little Mildred stood at the colonel’s side 
talking into his ear. “ Will you be good 
enough to take your seats, please, gentle- 
men?” he said, and the mess dropped into 
the chairs. 

Only Dirkovitch’s seat, next to Little 
Mildred’s, was blank, and Little Mildred 
himself had found Hira Singh’s place. 


210 Mine Own People 

The wide-eyed mess-sergeant filled the 
glasses in dead silence. Once more the 
colonel rose, but his hand shook, and the 
port spilled on the table as he looked 
straight at the man in Little Mildred’s 
chair and said, hoarsely: “Mr. Vice, the 
Queen.” There was a little pause, but the 
man sprung to his feet and answered, with- 
out hesitation: “The Queen, God bless 
her! ” and as he emptied the thin glass he 
snapped the shank between his fingers. 

Long and long ago, when the Empress 
of India was a young woman, and there 
were no unclean ideals in the land, it was 
the custom in a few messes to drink the 
queen’s toast in broken glass, to the huge 
delight of the mess contractors. The cus- 
tom is now dead, because there is nothing 
to break anything for, except now and 
again the word of a government, and that 
has been broken already. 

“ That settles it,” said the colonel, with 
a gasp. “ He’s not a sergeant. What in 
the world is he? ” 

The entire mess echoed the word, and the 
volley of questions would have scared any 
man. Small wonder that the ragged, fil- 
thy invader could only smile and shake 
his head. 

From under the table, calm and smiling 
urbanely, rose Dirkovitch, who had been 
roused from healthful slumber by feet upon 


The Man Who Was 21 1 

his body. By the side of the man he rose, 
and the man shrieked and groveled at his 
feet. It was a horrible sight, coming so 
swiftly upon the pride and glory of the 
toast that had brought the strayed wits 
together. 

Dirkovitch made no offer to raise him, 
but Little Mildred heaved him up in an 
instant. It is not good that a gentleman 
who can answer to the queen’s toast should 
lie at the feet of a subaltern of Cossacks. 

The hasty action tore the wretch’s upper 
clothing nearly to the waist, and his body 
was seamed with dry black scars. There 
is only one weapon in the world that cuts 
in parallel lines, and it is neither the cane 
nor the cat. Dirkovitch saw the marks, 
and the pupils of his eyes dilated — also, 
his face changed. He said something that 
sounded like “ Shto ve takete;” and the 
man, fawning, answered “ Chetyre.” 

“What’s that?” said everybody to- 
gether. 

“ His number. That is number four, 
you know.” Dirkovitch spoke very 
thickly. 

“ What has a queen’s officer to do with 
a qualified number? ” said the colonel, and 
there rose an unpleasant growl round the 
table. 

“ How can I tell?” said the affable Ori- 
ental, with a sweet smile. “ He is a — how 


212 Mine Own People 

you have it? — escape — runaway, from 
over there.” 

He nodded toward the darkness of the 
night. 

“ Speak to him, if he’ll answer you, and 
speak to him gently,” said Little Mildred, 
settling the man in a chair. It seemed 
most improper to all present that Dirko- 
vitch should sip brandy as he talked in 
purring, spitting Russian to the creature 
who answered so feebly and with such evi- 
dent dread. But since Dirkovitch appeared 
to understand, no man said a word. They 
breathed heavily, leaning forward in the 
long gaps of the conversation. The next 
time that they have no engagements on 
hand the White Hussars intend to go to 
St. Petersburg and learn Russian. 

“ He does not know how many years 
ago,” said Dirkovitch, facing the mess, 
“ but he says it was very long ago, in a 
war. I think that there was an accident. 
He says he was of this glorious and dis- 
tinguished regiment in the war.” 

“ The rolls ! The rolls ! Holmer, get 
the rolls ! ” said Little Mildred, and the ad- 
jutant dashed off bareheaded to the order- 
ly-room where the rolls of the regiment 
were kept. He returned just in time to 
hear Dirkovitch conclude: “Therefore I 
am most sorry to say there was an acci- 
dent, which would have been reparable if 


The Man Who Was 213 

he had apologized to that our colonel, 
which he had insulted.” 

Another growl, which the colonel tried 
to beat down. The mess was in no mood 
to weigh insults to Russian colonels just 
then. 

“ He does not remember, but I think that 
there was an accident, and so he was not 
exchanged among the prisoners, but he 
was sent to another place — how do you 
say? — the country. So, he says, he came 
here. He does not know how he came. 
Eh? He was at Chepany ” — the man 
caught the word, nodded, and shivered — 
“ at Zhigansk and Irkutsk. I can not un- 
derstand how he escaped. He says, too, 
that he was in the forests for many years, 
but how many years he has forgotten — 
that with many things. It was an acci- 
dent; done because he did not apologize to 
that our colonel. Ah! ” 

Instead of echoing Dirkovitch’s sigh of 
regret, it is sad to record that the White 
Hussars livelily exhibited unchristian de- 
light and other emotions, hardly restrained 
by their sense of hospitality. Holmer flung 
the frayed and yellow regimental rolls on 
the table, and the men flung themselves 
atop of these. 

“ Steady ! Fifty-six — fifty-five — fifty- 
four,” said Holmer. “ Here we are. 

‘ Lieutenant Austin Limmason — missing.’ 


214 Mine Own People 

That was before Sebastopol. What an in- 
fernal shame! Insulted one of their colo- 
nels, and was quietly shipped off. Thirty 
years of his life wiped out.” 

“ But he never apologized. Said he’d 
see him first,” chorused the mess. 

“Poor devil! I suppose he never had 
the chance afterward. How did he come 
here?” said the colonel. 

The dingy heap in the chair could give 
no answer. 

“ Do you know who you are? ” 

It laughed weakly. 

“ Do you know that you are Limmason 
— Lieutenant Limmason, of the White 
Hussars?” 

Swift as a shot came the answer, in a 
slightly surprised tone: “Yes, I’m Lim- 
mason, of course.” The light died out in 
his eyes, and he collapsed afresh, watching 
every motion of Dirkovitch with terror. 
A flight from Siberia may fix a few ele- 
mentary facts in the mind, but it does not 
lead to continuity of thought. The man 
could not explain how, like a homing pig- 
eon, he had found his way to his old mess 
again. Of what he had suffered or seen 
he knew nothing. He cringed before 
Dirkovitch as instinctively as he had 
pressed the spring of the candlestick, 
sought the picture of the drum-horse, and 
answered to the queen’s toast. The rest 


The Man Who Was 215 

was a blank that the dreaded Russian 
tongue could only in part remove. His 
head bowed on his breast, and he giggled 
and cowered alternately. 

The devil that lived in the brandy 
prompted Dirkovitch at this extremely in- 
opportune moment to make a speech. He 
rose, swaying slightly, gripped the table- 
edge, while his eyes glowed like opals, and 
began ; 

“ Fellow-soldiers glorious — true friends 
and hospitables. It was an accident, and 
deplorable — most deplorable.” Here he 
smiled sweetly all round the mess. “ But 
you will think of this little — little thing. 
So little, is it not? The czar! Posh! I 
slap my fingers — I snap my fingers at 
him. Do I believe in him? No! But the 
Slav who has done nothing, him I believe. 
Seventy — how much? — millions that have 
done nothing — not one thing. Napoleon 
was an episode.” He banged a hand on 
the table. “ Hear you, old peoples, we 
have done nothing in the world — out here. 
All our work is to do: and it shall be done, 
old peoples. Get away! ” He waved his 
hand imperiously, and pointed to the man. 
“ You see him. He is not good to see. 
He was just one little — oh, so little — 
accident, that no one remembered. Now 
he is That. So will you be, brother-sol- 
diers so brave — so will you be. But you 


21 6 Mine Own People 

will never come back. You will all go 
where he is gone, or — ” he pointed to the 
great coffin shadow on the ceiling, and mut- 
tering, “ Seventy millions — get away, you 
old people,” fell asleep. 

“ Sweet, and to the point,” said Little 
Mildred. “ What’s the use of getting 
wroth? Let’s make the poor devil 
comfortable.” 

But that was a matter suddenly and 
swiftly taken from the loving hands of the 
White Hussars. The lieutenant had re- 
turned only to go away again three days 
later, when the wail of the “ Dead March ” 
and the tramp of the squadrons told the 
wondering station, that saw no gap in the 
table, an officer of the regiment had re- 
signed his new-found commission. 

And Dirkovitch — bland, supple, and 
always genial — went away too by a night 
train. Little Mildred and another saw him 
off, for he was the guest of the mess, and 
even had he smitten the colonel with the 
open hand, the law of the mess allowed no 
relaxation of hospitality. 

“ Good-bye, Dirkovitch, and a pleasant 
journey,” said Little Mildred. 

“ Au revoir, my true friends,” said the 
Russian. 

“Indeed! But we thought you were 
going home? ” 

“Yes; but I will come again. My 


The Man Who Was 217 

friends, is that road shut?” He pointed 
to where the north star burned over the 
Khyber Pass. 

“ By Jove! I forgot. Of course. Happy 
to meet you, old man, any time you like. 
Got everything you want — cheroots, ice, 
bedding? That’s all right. Well, au re- 
voir, Dirkovitch.” 

“ Um,” said the other man, as the tail- 
lights of the train grew small. “ Of — all 
— the — unmitigated — ” 

Little Mildred answered nothing, but 
watched the north star, and hummed a 
selection from a recent burlesque that had 
much delighted the White Hussars. It 
ran: 

“ I’m sorry for Mr. Bluebeard, 

I’m sorry to cause him pain: 

But a terrible spree there’s sure to bo 
When he comes back again.” 


THE END. 


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On Greenhow Hill 


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ON GREENHOW HILL 


“ Ohi ahmed din ! Shafiz UUah ahoo / 
Bahadur Khan, where are you ? Come out of 
the tents, as I have done, and fight against 
the English. Don’t kill your own kin 1 Come 
out to me ! ” 

The deserter from a native corps was 
crawling round the outskirts of the camp, 
firing at intervals, and shouting invitations to 
his old comrades. Misled by the rain and the 
darkness, he came to the English wing of the 
camp, and with his yelping and rifle practise 
disturbed the men. They had been making 
roads all day, and were tired. 

Ortheris was sleeping at Learoyd’s feet. 
“ Wot’s all that ? ” he said, thickly. Learoyd 
snored, and a Snider bullet ripped its way 
through the tent wall. The men swore. 
“ It’s that bloomin’ deserter from the Aurang- 
abadis,” said Ortheris. “ Git up, some one, 
an’ tell ’em ’e’s come to the wrong shop.” 

“ Go to sleep, little man,” said Mulvaney, 
who was steaming nearest the door. “ I 
can’t rise an’ expaytiate with him. ’Tis 
rainin’ intrenchin’ tools outside.” 


221 


222 


On Greenhow Hill 


“ ’Tain’t because you bloomin’ can’t. It’s 
cause you bloomin’ won’t, ye long, limp, lousy, 
lazy beggar you. ’Ark to ’im ’owling ! ” 

“ Wot’s the good of argyfying ? Put a 
bullet into the swine ? ’E’s keepin’ us 
awake ! ” said another voice. 

A subaltern shouted angrily, and a dripping 
sentry whined from the darkness. 

“ ’Tain’t no good, sir. I can’t see ’im. ’E’s 
*idin’ somewhere down ’ill.” 

Ortheris tumbled out of his blanket. 
“ Shall I try to get ’im, sir ? ” said he. 

“ No,” was the answer ; “ lie down. I 
won’t have the whole camp shooting all 
round the clock. Tell him to go and pot his 
friends.” 

Ortheris considered for a moment. Then, 
putting his head under the tent wall, he called, 
as a ’bus conductor calls in a block, “ ’Igher 
up, there I ’Igher up ! ” 

The men laughed, and the laughter v^as 
carried down wind to the deserter, who, hear- 
ing that he had made a mistake, went off to 
worry his own regiment half a mile away. He 
was received with shots, for the Aurangabadis 
were very angry with him for disgracing their 
colors. 

“ An’ that’s all right,” said Ortheris, with- 
drawing his head as he heard the hiccough of 
the Sniders in the distance. “ S’elp me 
Gawd, tho’, that man’s not fit to live — messin’ 
with my beauty-sleep this way.” 


On Greenhow Hill 


223 

“ Go out and shoot him in the morning, 
then,” said the subaltern, incautiously. 
“ Silence in the tents now 1 Get your rest, 
men ! ” 

Ortheris lay down with a happy little sigh, 
and in two minutes there was no sound ex- 
cept the rain on the canvas and the all-em- 
bracing and elemental snoring of Learoyd. 

The camp lay on a bare ridge of the Him- 
alayas, and for a week had been waiting for 
a %ing column to make connection. The 
nightly rounds of the deserter and his friends 
had become a nuisance. 

In the morning the men dried themselves in 
hot sunshine and cleaned their grimy accouter- 
ments. The native regiment was to take its 
turn of road-making that day while the Old 
Regiment loafed. 

“ I’m goin’ to lay fer a shot at that man,” 
said Ortheris, when he had finished washing 
out his rifle. “ ’E comes up the water-course 
every evenin’ about five o’clock. If we go 
and lie out on the north ’ill a bit this after- 
noon we’ll get ’im.” 

“ You’re a bloodthirsty little mosquito,” 
said Mulvaney, blowing blue clouds into the 
air. “ But I suppose I will have to come wid 
you. Fwhere’s Jock ? ” 

“ Gone out with the Mixed Pickles, ’cause 
’e thinks ’isself a bloomin’ marksman,” said 
Ortheris, with scorn. 

The “ Mixed Pickles ” were a detachment 


224 On Greenhow Hill 

of picked shots, generally employed in clear- 
ing spurs of hills when the enemy were too 
impertinent. This taught the young officers 
how to handle men, and did not do the enemy 
much harm. Mulvaney and Ortheris strolled 
out of camp, and passed the Aurangabadis 
going to their road-making. 

“ You’ve got to sweat to-day,” said 
Ortheris, genially. “ We’re going to get your 
man. You didn’t knock ’im out last night by 
any chance, any of you ? ” 

“No. The pig went away mocking us. I 
had one shot at him,” said a private. “ He’s 
my cousin, and I ought to have cleared our 
dishonor. But good-luck to you.” 

They went cautiously to the north hill, 
Ortheris leading, because, as he explained, 
“ this is a long-range show, an’ I’ve got to do 
it.” His was an almost passionate devotion 
to his rifle, whom, by barrack-room report, he 
was supposed to kiss every night before turn- 
ing in. Charges and scuffles he held in con- 
tempt, and, when they were inevitable, slipped 
between Mulvaney and Learoyd, bidding them 
to fight for his skin as well as their own. 
They never failed him. He trotted along, 
questing like a hound on a broken trail, 
through the wood of the north hill. At last 
he was satisfied, and threw himself down on 
the soft pine-needle slope that commanded a 
clear view of the water-course and a brown bare 
hillside beyond it. The trees made a scented 


On Greenhow Hill 


225 

darkness in which an army corps could have 
hidden from the sun-glare without. 

“ ’Ere’s the tail o’ the wood,” said Ortheris. 

’E’s got to come up the water-course, ’cause 
it gives ’im cover. We’ll lay ’ere. ’Tain’t not 
’art so bloomin’ dusty neither.” 

He buried his nose in a clump of scentless 
white violets. No one had come to tell the 
flowers that the season of their strength was 
long past, and they had bloomed merrily in 
the twilight of the pines. 

“ This is something like,” he said, luxuri- 
ously. “ Wot a ’evinly clear drop for a bullet 
acrost. How much d’ you make it, Mul- 
vaney ? ” 

“ Seven hunder. Maybe a trifle less, bekase 
the air’s so thin.” 

Wop! wop I wop I went a volley of mus- 
ketry on the rear face of the north hill. 

“ Curse them Mixed Pickles firin’ at nothin’ 1 
They’ll scare ’arf the country.” 

“ Thry a sightin’ shot in the middle of the 
row,” said Mulvaney, the man of many wiles. 
“ There’s a red rock yonder he’ll be sure to 
pass. Quick 1 ” 

Ortheris ran his sight up to six hundred 
yards and fired. The bullet threw up a 
feather of dust by a clump of gentians at the 
base of the rock. 

“ Good enough 1 ” said Ortheris, snapping 
the scale down. “ You snick your sights to 
mine, or a little lower. You’re always firin' 

15 


226 On Greenhow Hill 


high. But remember, first shot to me. Oh, 
Lordy ! but it’s a lovely afternoon.” 

The noise of the firing grew louder, and 
there was a tramping of men in the wood. 
The two lay very quiet, for they knew that the 
British soldier is desperately prone to fire at 
anything that moves or calls. Then Learoyd 
appeared, his tunic ripped across the breast by 
a bullet, looking ashamed of himself. He 
flung down on the pine-needles, breathing in 
snorts. 

“One o’ them damned gardeners o’ th’ 
Pickles,” said he, fingering the rent. “ Firin’ 
to th’ right flank, when he knowed I was there. 
If I knew who he was I’d ’a’ ripped the hide 
off ’un. Look at ma tunic ! ” 

“ That’s the spishil trustability av a marks- 
man. Train him to hit a fly wid a stiddy rest 
at seven hunder, an’ he’ll loose on anythin’ 
he sees or hears up to th’ mile. You’re well 
out av that fancy-firin’ gang, Jock. Stay 
here.” 

“Bin firin’ at the bloomin’ wind in the 
bloomin’ treetops,” said Ortheris, with a 
chuckle. “ I’ll show you some firin’ later on.” 

They wallowed in the pine-needles, and the 
sun warmed them where they lay. The Mixed 
Pickles ceased firing and returned to camp, 
and left the wood to a few scared apes. The 
water-course lifted up its voice in the silence 
and talked foolishly to the rocks. Now and 
again the dull thump of a blasting charge three 


On Greenhow Hill 227 

miles away told that the Aurangabadis were in 
difficulties with their road-making. The men 
smiled as they listened, and lay still soaking 
in the warm leisure. Presently Learoyd, be- 
tween the whiffs of his pipe : 

“ Seems queer — about ’im yonder — desertin’ 
at all.” 

“ ’E’ll be a bloomin’ side queerer when I’ve 
done with ’im,” said Ortheris. They were 
talking in whispers, for the stillness of the 
wood and the desire of slaughter lay heavy 
upon them. 

“ I make no doubt he had his reasons for 
desertin’ ; but, my faith ! I make less doubt 
ivry man has good reason for killin’ him,” said 
Mulvaney. 

“ Happen there was a lass tewed up wi’ it. 
Men do more than more forth’ sake of a lass.” 

“ They make most av of us ’list. They’ve 
no manner av right to make us desert.” 

“Ah, they make us ’list, or their fathers 
do,” said Learoyd, softly, his helmet over his 
eyes. 

Ortheris’ brows contracted savagely. He 
was watching the valley. “ If it’s a girl. I’ll 
shoot the beggar twice over, an’ second time 
for bein’ a fool. You’re blasted sentimental 
all of a sudden. Thinkin’ o’ your last near 
shave ? ” 

“ Nay, lad ; ah was but thinkin’ o’ w'hat 
had happened.” 

“An’ fwhat has happened, ye lumberin’ 


228 On Greenhow Hill 


child av calamity, that you’re lowing like a 
cow-calf at the back av the pasture, an’ sug- 
gestin’ invidious excuses for the man Stanley’s 
goin’ to kill. Ye’ll have to wait another hour 
yet, little man. Spit it out, Jock, an’ bellow 
melojus to the moon. It takes an earthquake 
or a bullet graze to fetch aught out av you. 
Discourse, Don Juanl The a-moors of Lo- 
tharius Learoyd. Stanley, kape a rowlin’ 
rig’mental eye on the valley.” 

“ It’s along o’ yon hill there,” said Learoyd, 
watching the bare sub-Himalayan spur that 
reminded him of his Yorkshire moors. He 
was speaking more to himself than his fellows. 
“ Ay,” said he ; “ Rumbolds Moor stands up 
ower Skipton town, an’ Greenhow Hill stands 
up ower Pately Brigg. I reckon you’ve never 
heard tell o’ Greenhow Hill, but yon bit o’ 
bare stuff, if there was nobbut a white road 
windin’, is like ut, strangely like. Moors an’ 
moors — moors wi’ never a tree for shelter, an’ 
gray houses wi’ flag-stone rooves, and pewits 
cryin’, an’ a windhover goin’ to and fro just 
like these kites. And cold 1 a wind that cuts 
you like a knife. You could tell Greenhow 
Hill folk by the red-apple color o’ their cheeks 
an’ nose tips, an’ their blue eyes, driven into 
pin-points by the wind. Miners mostly, bur- 
rowin’ for lead i’ th’ hillsides, followin’ the 
trail of th’ ore vein same as a field-rat. It was 
the roughest minin’ I ever seen. Yo’d come 
on a bit o’ creakin’ wood windlass like a well- 


On Greenhow Hill 


229 

head, an’ you was let down i’ th’ bight of a 
rope, fendin’ yoursen off the side wi’ one hand, 
carryin’ a candle stuck in a lump o’ clay with 
t’other, an’ clickin’ hold of a rope with t’other 
hand.” 

“ An’ that’s three of them,” said Mulvaney. 
“ Must be a good climate in those parts.” 

Learoyd took no heed. 

“ An’ then yo’ came to a level, where you 
crept on your hands an’ knees through a mile 
o’ windin’ drift, an’ you come out into a cave- 
place as big as Leeds Town-hall, with a en- 
gine pumpin’ water from workin’s ’at went 
deeper still. It’s a queer country, let alone 
minin’, for the hill is full of those natural 
caves, an’ the rivers an’ the becks drops into 
what they call pot-holes, an’ come out again 
miles away.” 

“ Wot was you doin’ there ? ” said Ortheris. 

“ I was a young chap then, an’ mostly went 
wi’ ’osses, leadin’ coal and lead ore ; but at 
th’ time I’m tellin’ on I was drivin’ the wagon 
team i’ the big sumph. I didn’t belong to 
that countryside by rights. I went there be- 
cause of a little difference at home, an’ at fust 
I took up wi’ a rough lot. One night we’d 
been drinkin’, and I must ha’ hed more than 
I could stand, or happen th’ ale was none so 
good. Though i’ them days, by for God, I 
never seed bad ale.” He flung his arms over 
his head and gripped a vast handful of white 
violets. “ Nah,” said he, “ I never seed the 


230 On Greenhow Hill 

ale I could not drink, the ’bacca I could not 
smoke, nor the lass I could not kiss. Well, 
we mun have a race home, the lot on us. I 
lost all th’ others, an’ when I was climbin’ 
ower one of them walls built o’ loose stones, 
I comes down into the ditch, stones an’ all, ’an 
broke my arm. Not as I knowed much about 
it, for I fell on th’ back o’ my head, an’ was 
knocked stupid like. An’ when I come to 
mysen it were mornin’, an’ I were lyin’ on the 
settle i’ Jesse Roantree’s house-place, an’ ’Liza 
Roantree was settin’ sewin’. I ached all 
ower, and my mouth were like a lime-kiln. 
She gave me a drink out of a china mug wi’ 
gold letters — ‘ A Present from Leeds,’ — as I 
looked at many and many a time after. 
‘ Yo’re to lie still while Doctor Warbottom 
comes, because your arm’s broken, an’ father 
has sent a lad to fetch him. He found yo’ 
when he was goin’ to work, an’ carried you 
here on his back,’ sez she. ‘ Oa ! ’ sez I ; an’ 
I shet my eyes, for I felt ashamed o’ mysen. 
‘ Father’s gone to his work these three hours, 
an’ he said he’d tell ’em to get somebody to 
drive the train.’ The clock ticked an’ a bee 
corned in the house, an’ they rung i’ my head 
like mill wheels. An’ she give me another 
drink an’ settled the pillow. ‘ Eh, but yo’re 
young to be getten drunk an’ such like, but 
yo’ won’t do it again, will yo ? ’ ‘ Noa,’ sez I. 

‘ I wouldn’t if she’d not but stop they mill- 
wheels clatterin’.’ ” 


On Greenhow Hill 231 

“ Faith, it’s a good thing to be nursed by a 
woman when you’re sick ! ” said Mulvaney. 
“ Dirt cheap at the price av twenty broken 
heads.” 

Ortheris turned to frown across the valley. 
He had not been nursed by many women in 
his life. 

“ An’ then Doctor Warbottom comes ridin’ 
up, an’ Jesse Roantree along with ’im. He 
was a high-larned doctor, but he talked wi’ 
poor folks same as theirsens. ‘ What’s tha 
bin agaate on naa ? ’ he sings out. ‘ Brekkin 
tha thick head ? ’ An’ he felt me all over. 
‘ That’s none broken. Tha’ nobbut knocked 
a bit sillier than ordinary, an’ that’s daaft 
eneaf.’ An’ soa he went on, callin’ me all the 
names he could think on, but settin’ my arm, 
wi’ Jesse’s help, as careful as could be. ‘ Yo’ 
mun let the big oaf bide here a bit, Jesse,’ he 
says, when he had strapped me up an’ given 
me a dose o’ physic ; ‘ an’ you an’ ’Liza will 
tend him, though he’s scarcelins worth the 
trouble. An’tha’ll lose tha work,’ sez he, ‘ an’ 
tha’ll be upon th’ Sick Club for a couple o’ 
months an’ more. Doesn’t tha think tha’s a 
fool ? ’” 

“ But whin was a young man, high or low, 
the other av a fool, I’d like to know ? ” said 
Mulvaney. “ Sure, folly’s the only safe way 
to wisdom, for I’ve thried it.” 

“ Wisdom 1 ” grinned Ortheris, scanning 


232 On Greenhow Hill 

his comrades with uplifted chin. “ You’re 
bloomin’ Solomons, you two, ain’t you ? ” 

Learoyd went calmly on, with a steady eye 
like an ox chewing the cud. “ And that was 
how I corned to know ’Liza Roantree. There’s 
some tunes as she used to sing — aw, she were 
always singin’ — that fetches Greenhow Hill 
before my eyes as fair as yon brow across 
there. And she would learn me to sing bass, 
an’ I was to go to th’ chapel wi’ ’em, where 
Jesse and she led the singin’, th’ old man 
playin’ the fiddle. He was a strange chap, 
old Jesse, fair mad wi’ music, an’ he made me 
promise to learn the big fiddle when my arm 
was better. It belonged to him, and it stood 
up in a big case alongside o’ th’ eight-day 
clock, but Willie Satterthwaite, as played it in 
the chapel, had getten deaf as a door-post, and 
it vexed Jesse, as he had to rap him ower his 
head wi’ th’ fiddle-stick to make him give ower 
sawin’ at th’ right time. 

“ But there was a black drop in it all, an’ it 
was a man in a black coat that brought it. 
When th’ Primitive Methodist preacher came 
to Greenhow, he would always stop wi’ Jesse 
Roantree, an’ he laid hold of me from th’ be- 
ginning. It seemed I wor a soul to be saved, 
an’ he meaned to do it. At th’ same time I 
jealoused ’at he were keen o’ savin’ ’Liza 
Roantree’s soul as well, an’ I could ha’ killed 
him many a time. An’ this went on till one 
day I broke out, an’ borrowed th’ brass for a 


On Greenhow Hill 233 

drink from ’Liza. After fower days I come 
back, wi’ my tail betweep my legs, just to see 
’Liza again. But Jesse were at home, an’ th’ 
preacher — th’ Reverend Amos Barraclough. 
’Liza said naught, but a bit o’ red come into 
her face as were white of a regular thing. 
Says Jesse, tryin’ his best to be civil : ‘ Nay, 
lad, it’s like this. You’ve getten to choose 
which way it’s goin’ to be. I’ll ha’ nobody 
across ma doorsteps as goe" a-drinkin’, an’ 
borrows my lass’s money to spend i’ their drink. 
Ho’d tha tongue, ’Liza,’ sez he when she 
wanted to put in a word ’at I were welcome 
to th’ brass, an’ she were none afraid that I 
wouldn’t pay it back. Then the reverend cuts 
in, seein’ as Jesse were losin’ his temper, an’ 
they fair beat me among them. But it were 
’Liza, as looked an’ said naught, as did more 
than either o’ their tongues, an’ soa I con- 
cluded to get converted.” 

“ Fwhat 1 ” shouted Mulvaney. Then, 
checking himself, he said, softly : “ Let be I 
Let be ! Sure the Blessed Virgin is the mother 
of all religion an’ most women ; an’ there’s a 
dale av piety in a girl if the men would only 
let it stay there. I’d ha’ been converted my- 
self under the circumstances.” 

“ Nay, but,” pursued Learoyd, with a blush, 
“ I meaned it.” 

Ortheris laughed as loudly as he dared, 
having regard-to his business at the time. 

“ Ay, Ortheris, you may laugh, but you 


On Greenhow Hill 


234 

didn’t know yon preacher Barraclough — a 
little white-faced chap wi’ a voice as ’ud wile 
a bird off an a bush, and a way o’ layin’ hold 
of folks as made them think they’d never had 
a live man for a friend before. You never 
saw him, an’ — an’ — you never seed ’Liza Roan- 
tree — never seed ’Liza Roantree. . . . Happen 
it was as much ’Liza as th’ preacher and her 
father, but anyways they all meaned it, an’ I 
was fair shamed o’ mysen, an’ so become 
what they called a changed character. And 
when I think on, it’s hard to believe as yon 
chap going to prayer-meetin’s, chapel, and 
class-meetin’s were me. But I never had 
naught to say for mysen, though there was a 
deal o’ shoutin’, and old Sammy Strother, as 
were almost clemmed to death and doubled 
up with the rheumatics, would sing out, ‘ Joy- 
ful ! joyful I ’ and ’at it were better to go up 
to heaven in a coal-basket than down to hell 
i’ a coach an’ six. And he would put his poor 
old claw on my shoulder, say in’ : ‘ Doesn’t 
tha feel it, tha great lump ? Doesn’t tha feel 
it ? ’ An’ sometimes I thought I did, and 
then again I thought I didn’t, an’ how was 
that ? ” 

“ The iverlastin ’ nature av mankind,” said 
Mulvaney. “ An ’, furthermore, I misdoubt 
you were built for the Primitive Methodians. 
They’re a new corps anyways. I hold by the 
Quid Church, for she’s the mother of them all 
— ay, an ’ the father, too. I like her bekase 


On Greenhow Hill 235 

she’s most remarkable regimental in her fit- 
tings. I may die in Honolulu, Nova Zambra, 
or Cape Cayenne, but wherever I die, me 
bein’ fwhat I am, an’ a priest handy, I go un- 
der the same orders an’ the same words an’ 
the same unction as tho’ the pope himself 
come down from the dome av St. Peter’s to 
see me off. There’s neither high nor low, nor 
broad nor deep, not betwixt nor between with 
her, an’ that’s what I like. But mark you, 
she’s no manner av Church for a wake man, 
bekase she takes the body and the soul av 
him, onless he has his proper work to do. I 
remember when my father died, that was three 
months cornin’ to his grave ; begad he’d ha’ 
sold the sheebeen above our heads for ten 
minutes’ quittance of purgathory. An’ he did 
all he could. That’s why I say it takes a 
strong man to deal with the Quid Church, an’ 
for that reason you’ll find so many women go 
there. An’ that same’s a conundrum.” 

“ Wot’s the use o’ worritin’ ’bout these 
things ? ” said Ortheris. “ You’re bound to 
find all out quicker nor you want to, any’ow.” 
He jerked the cartridge out of the breech-lock 
into the palm of his hand. “ ’Ere’s my chap- 
lain,” he said, and made the venomous black- 
headed bullet bow like a marionette. “ ’E’s 
going’ to teach a man all about which is which, 
an’ wot’s true, after all, before sundown. But 
wot ’appened after that, Jock ? ” 

“ There was one thing they boggled at, and 


236 On Greenhow Hill 

almost shut th’ gate i’ my face for, and that 
were my dog Blast, th’ only one saved out o’ a 
litter o’ pups as was blowed up when a keg o’ 
•minin’ powder loosed off in th’ storekeeper’s 
hut. They liked his name no better than his 
ibusiness. which was fightin’ every dog he 
•corned across ; a rare good dog, wi’ spots o’ 
'black and pink on his face, one ear gone, and 
lame o’ one side wi’ being driven in a basket 
through an iron roof, a matter of half a mile. 

“ They said I mun give him up ’ cause ’he 
-were worldly and low ; and would I let mysen 
be shut out of heaven for the sake of a dog ? 

‘ Nay,’ says I, ‘ if th’ door isn’t wide enough 
for th’ pair on us, we’ll stop outside, or we’ll 
.none be parted.’ And th’ preacher spoke up 
ior Blast, as had a likin’ for him from th’ first 
— I reckon that was why I come to like th’ 
preacher — and wouldn’t hear o’ changin’ his 
>name to Bless, as some o’ them wanted. So 
th’ pair on us became reg’lar chapel members. 
But it’s hard for a young chap o’ my build to 
cut tracks from the world, th’ flesh, an’ the 
devil all av a heap. Yet I stuck to it for a 
long time, while th’ lads as used to stand about 
th’ town-end an’ lean ower th’ bridge, spittin’ 
into th’ beck o’ a Sunday, would call after me, 
‘ Sitha, Learoyd, when’s tha bean to preach, 
’cause we’re cornin’ to hear that.’ ‘ Ho’d tha 
jaw ! He hasn’t getten th’ white choaker on 
to morn,’ another lad would say, and I had to 
double my fists hard i’ th’ bottom of my Sun- 


On Greenhow Hill 237 

day coat, and say to mysen, ‘ If ’twere Monday 
and I warn’t a member o’ the Primitive 
Methodists, I’d leather all th’ lot of yond’.’ 
That was th’ hardest of all — to know that I 
could fight and I mustn’t fight.” 

Sympathetic grunts from Mulvaney. 

“ So what wi’ singin’, practicin,’ and class- 
meetin’s, and th’ big fiddle, as he made me take 
between my knees, I spent a deal o’ time i’ 
Jesse Roantree’s house-place. But often as I 
was there, th’ preacher fared to me to go 
oftener, and both th’ old an’ th’ young woman 
were pleased to have him. He lived i’ Pately 
Brigg, as were a goodish step off, but he come. 
He come all the same. I liked him as well or 
better as any man I’d ever seen i’ one way, 
and yet I hated him wi’ all my heart i’ t’other, 
and we watched each other like cat and mouse, 
but civil as you please, for I was on my best 
behavior, and he was that fair and open that 
I was bound to be fair with him. Rare and 
good company he was, if I hadn’t wanted to 
wring his diver little neck half of the time. 
Often and often when he was goin’ from 
Jesse’s I’d set him a bit on the road.” 

“ See ’im ’ome, you mean ? ” said Ortheris. 

“ Aye. It’s a way we have i’ Yorkshire o’ 
seein’ friends off. Yon was a friend as I 
didn’t want to come back, and he didn’t want 
me to come back neither, and so we’d walk 
together toward Pately, and then he’d set me 
back again, and there we’d be twal two i’ 


238 On Greenhow Hill 

o’clock the mornin’ settin’ each other to an’ 
fro like a blasted pair o’ pendulums twixt hill 
and valley, long after th’ light had gone out i’ 
’Liza’s window, as both on us had been look- 
ing at, pretending to watch the moon.” 

“ Ah 1 ” broke in Mulvaney, “ ye’d no 
chanst against the maraudin’ psalm-singer. 
They’ll take the airs an’ the graces, instid av 
the man, nine times out av ten, an’ they only 
find the blunder later — the wimmen.” 

“ That’s just where yo’re wrong,” said 
Learoyd, reddening under the freckled tan of 
his cheek. “ I was th’ first wi’ Liza, an’ yo’d 
think that were enough. But th’ parson were 
a steady-gaited sort o’ chap, and Jesse were 
strong o’ his side, and all th’ women i’ the 
congregation dinned it to ’Liza ’at she were 
fair fond to take up wi’ a wastrel ne’er-do- 
weel like me, as was scarcelins respectable, 
and a fighting-dog at his heels. It was all 
very well for her to be doing me good and 
saving my soul, but' she must mind as she 
didn’t do herself harm. They talk o’ rich 
folk bein’ stuck up an’ genteel, but for cast- 
iron pride o’ respectability, there’s naught like 
poor chapel folk. It’s as cold as th’ wind o’ 
Greenhow Hill — aye, and colder, for ’twill 
never change. And now I come to think on 
it, one of the strangest things I know is ’at 
they couldn’t abide th’ thought o’ soldiering. 
There’s a vast o’ fightin’ i’ th’ Bible, and 
there’s a deal of Methodists i’ th’ army ; but 


On Greenhow Hill 239 

to hear chapel folk talk yo’d think that sol- 
dierin’ were next door, an t’other side, to 
bangin’. I’ their meetin’s all their talk is o’ 
fightin’. When Sammy Strother were struk 
for summat to say in his prayers, he’d sing 
out : ‘ The sword o’ th’ Lord and o’ Gideon.’ 
They were alius at it about puttin’ on th’ 
whole armor o’ righteousness, an’ fightin’ the 
good fight o’ faith. And then, atop o’ ’t all, 
they held a prayer-meetin’ ower a young chap 
as wanted to ’list, and nearly deafened him, 
till he picked up his hat and fair ran away. 
And they’d tell tales in th’ Sunday-school o’ 
bad lads as had been thumped and brayed 
for bird-nesting o’ Sundays and playin’ truant 
o’ week-days, and how they took to wrestlin’, 
dog-fightin’, rabbit-runnin’, and drinkin’, till 
at last, as if ’twere a hepitaph on a grave- 
stone, they damned him across th’ moors wi’ 
it, an’ then he went and ’listed for a soldier, 
an’ they’d all fetch a deep breath, and throw 
up their eyes like a hen drinkin’.” 

“ Fwhy is it ? ” said Mulvaney, bringing 
down his hands on his thigh with a crack. 
“ In the name av God, fwhy is it ? I’ve seen 
it, tu. They cheat an’ they swindle, an’ they 
lie an’ they slander, an’ fifty things fifty times 
worse ; but the last an’ the worst, by their 
reckonin’, is to serve the Widdy honest. It’s 
like the talk av childer — seein’ things all 
round.” 

“ Plucky lot of fightin’ good fights of whats- 


On Greenhow Hill 


240 

ername they’d do if we didn’t see they had a 
quiet place to fight in. And such fightin’ as 
theirs is I Cats on the tiles. T’other callin’ 
to which to come on. I’d give a month’s pay 
to get some o’ them broad-backed beggars in 
London sweatin’ through a day’s road-makin’ 
an’ a night’s rain. They’d carry on a deal 
afterward — same as we’re supposed to carry 
on. I’ve bin turned out of a measly ’arf 
license pub. down Lambeth way, full o’ greasy 
kebmen, ’fore now,” said Ortheris with an 
oath. 

“ Maybe you were dhrunk,” said Mulvaney, 
soothingly. 

“ Worse nor that. The Forders were 
drunk. I was wearin’ the queen’s uni- 
form.” 

“ I’d not particular thought to be a soldier 
i’ them days,” said Learoyd, still keeping his 
eye on the bare hill opposite, “ but his sort o’ 
talk put it i’ my head. They was so good, 
th’ chapel folk, that they tumbled ower t’other 
side. But I stuck to it for ’Liza’s sake, 
specially as she was learning me to sing the 
bass part in a horotorio as Jesse were getting 
up. She sung like a throstle hersen, and we 
had practisin’s night after night for a matter 
of three months.” 

“ I know what a horotorio is,” said Orthe- 
ris, pertly. “ It’s a sort of chaplain’s sing- 
song — words all out of the Bible, and hullaba- 
loojah choruses.” 


On Greenhow Hill 


241 


“ Most Greenhow Hill folks played some 
instrument or t’other, an’ they all sung so you 
might have heard them miles away, and they 
was so pleased wi’ the noise they made they 
didn’t fair to want anybody to listen. The 
preacher sung high seconds when he wasn’t 
playin’ the flute, an’ they set me, as hadn’t 
got far with big fiddle, again Willie Satter- 
, thwaite, to jog his elbow when he had to get 
a’ gate playin’. Old Jesse was happy if ever 
a man was, for he were th’ conductor an’ th’ 
first fiddle an’ th’ leadin’ singer, beatin’ time 
wi’ his fiddle-stick, till at times he’d rap with 
it on the table, and cry out : ‘ Now, you mun 
all stop ; it’s my turn.’ And he’d face round 
j, to his front, fair sweatin’ wi’ pride, to sing the 
tenor solos. But he were grandest i’ th’ 
chorus waggin’ his head, flinging his arms 
round like a windmill, and singin’ hisself 
black in the face. A rare singer were 
Jesse. 

“ Yo’ see, I was not o’ much account wi’ ’em 
all exceptin’ to Eliza Roantree, and I had a 
deal o’ time settin’ quiet at meeting and horo- 
torio practises to hearken their talk, and if it 
were strange to me at beginnin’, it got stranger 
still at after, when I was shut in, and could 
study what it meaned. 

“Just after th’ horotorios come off, ’Liza, 
as had alius been weakly like, was took very 
bad. I walked Doctor Warbottom’s horse up 
and down a deal of times while he were inside, 
16 


242 


On Greenhow Hill 


where they wouldn’t let me go, though 1 fair 
ached to see her. 

“ ‘ She’ll be better i’ noo, lad — better i’ noo,* 
he used to say. ‘ Tha mun ha’ patience.’ 
Then they said if I was quiet I might go in, 
and th’ Reverend Amos Barraclough used to 
read to her lyin’ propped up among th’ pil- j 
lows. Then she began to mend a bit, and I 
they let me carry her on th’ settle, and when , j 
it got warm again she went about same as 
afore. Th’ preacher and me and Blast was a 
deal together i’ them days, and i’ one way we 
was rare good comrades. But I could ha’ 
stretched him time and again with a good-will. ! 
I mind one day he said he would like to go 
down into th’ bowels o’ th’ earth, and see how 
th’ Lord had builded th’ framework o’ the ever- 
lastin’ hills. He was one of them chaps as 
had a gift o’ sayin’ things. They rolled off 
the tip of his clever tongue, same as Mulvaney 
here, as would ha’ made a rale good preacher 
if he had nobbut given his mind to it. I lent 
him a suit o’ miner’s kit as almost buried th’ 
little man, and his white face, down i’ th’ coat 
collar and hat flap, looked like the face of a 
boggart, and he cowered down i’ th’ bottom o’ 
the wagon. I was drivin’ a tram as led up a 
bit of an incline up to th’ cave where the 
engine was pumpin’, and where th’ ore was 
brought up and put into th’ wagons as went 
down o’ themselves, me puttin’ th’ brake on 
and th’ horses a-trottin’ after. Long as it was 


On Greenhow Hill 243 

daylight we were good friends, but when we 
got fair into th’ dark, and could nobbut see 
th’ day shinin’ at the hole like a lamp at a 
street end, I feeled downright wicked. My 
religion dropped all away from me when 
I looked back at him as were always cornin’ 
between me and Eliza. The talk was ’at they 
were to be wed when she got better, an’ I 
couldn’t get her to say yes or nay to it. He 
began to sing a hymn in his thin voice, and I 
came out wi’ a chorus that was all cussin’ an’ 
swearin’ at my horses, an’ I began to know how 
I hated him. He were such a little chap, too. 
I could drop him wi’ one hand down Gar- 
stang’s copperhole — a place where th’ beck 
slithered ower th’ edge on a rock, and fell wi’ 
a bit of a whisper into a pit as rope i’ Green- 
how could plump.” 

Again Learoyd rooted up the innocent vio- 
lets. “ Aye, he should see th’ bowels o’ th’ 
earth an’ never naught else. I could take 
him a mile or two along th’ drift, and leave 
him wi’ his candle doused to cry hallelujah, 
wi’ none to hear him and say amen. I was to 
lead him down the ladderway to th’ drift where 
Jesse Roantree was workin’, and why shouldn’t 
he slip on th’ ladder, wi’ my feet on his fingers 
till they loosed grip, and I put him down wi’ 
my heel ? If I went fust down th’ ladder I 
could click hold on him and chuck him over my 
head, so as he should go squashin’ down the 
shaft, breakin’ his bones at ev’ry timberin’, as 


244 Greenhow Hill 

Bill Appleton did when he was fresh, and 
hadn’t a bone left when he brought to th’ bot- 
tom. Niver a blasted leg to walk from Pately. 
Niver an arm to put round ’Liza Roantree’s 
waist. Niver no more — niver no more.” 

The thick lips curled back over the yellow 
teeth, and that flushed face was not pretty to 
look upon. Mulvaney nodded sympathy, and 
Ortheris, moved by his comrade’s passion, ' 
brought up the rifle to his shoulder, and 
searched the hillsides for his quarry, mutter- 
ing ribaldry about a sparrow, a spout, and a 
thunder-storm. The voice of the water-course 
supplied the necessary small-talk till Learoyd 
picked up his story. 

“ But it’s none so easy to kill a man like 
you. When I’d give up my horses to th’ lad 
as took my place, and I was showin’ th’ 
preacher th’ workin’s, shoutin’ into his ear 
across th’ clang o’ th’ pumpin’ engines, I saw 
he was afraid o’ naught ; and when the lamp- 
light showed his black eyes, I could feel as he 
was masterin’ me again. I were no better nor 
Blast chained up short and growlin’ i’ the 
depths of him while a strange dog went safe 
past. 

“ ‘ Th’art a coward and a fool,’ I said to my- 
sen : an’ wrestled i’ my mind again’ him till, 
when we come to Garstang’s copper-hole, I 
laid hold o’ the preacher and lifted him up 
over my head and held him into the darkest 
on it. ‘Now, lad,’ I says, ‘ it’s to be one or 


On Greenhow Hill 245 

t’other on us — thee or me — for ’Liza Roan- 
tree. Why, isn’t thee afraid for thysen ? ’ I 
says, for he were still i’ my arms as a sack. 
‘ Nay ; I’m but afraid for thee, my poor lad, 
as knows naught,’ says he. I set him down 
on th’ edge, an’ th’ beck run stiller, an’ there 
was no more buzzin’ in my head like when th’ 
bee come through th’ window o’ Jesse’s house. 
‘ What dost tha mean ? ’ says I. 

“ ‘ I’ve often thought as thou ought to know,’ 
says he, ‘ but ’twas hard to tell thee. ’Liza 
Roantree’s for neither on us, nor for nobody 
o’ this earth. Doctor Warbottom says — and 
he knows her, and her mother before her — 
that she is in a decline, and she cannot live six 
months longer. He’s known it for many a 
day. Steady, John ! Steady ! ’ says he. 
And that weak little man pulled me further 
back and set me again’ him, and talked it all 
over quiet and still, me turnin’ a bunch o’ 
candles in my hand, and counting them ower 
and ower again as I listened. A deal on it 
were th’ regular preachin’ talk, but there were 
a vast lot as made me begin to think as he 
were more of a man than I’d ever given him 
credit for, till I were cut as deep for him as I 
were for mysen. 

“ Six candles we had, and we crawled and 
climbed all that day while they lasted, and I 
said to mysen : ‘ ’Liza Roantree hasn’t six 
months to live.’ And when we came into th’ 
daylight again we were like dead men to look 


246 On Greenhow Hill 

at, an’ Blast come behind us without so much 
as waggin’ his tail. When I saw ’Liza again 
she looked at me a minute, and says : ‘ Who’s 
telled tha ? For I see tha knows.’ And she 
tried to smile as she kissed me, and I fair 
broke down. 

“ You see, I was a young chap i’ them days, 
and had seen naught o’ life, let alone death, 
as is alius a-waitin’. She telled me as Doctor 
Warbottom said as Greenhow air was too keen, 
and they were goin’ to Bradford, to Jesse’s 
brother David, as worked i’ a mill, and I mun 
hold up like a man and a Christian, and she’d 
pray for me well ; and they went away, and the 
preacher that same back end o’ th’ year were 
appointed to another circuit, as they call it, and 
I were left alone on Greenhow Hill. 

“ I tried, and I tried hard, to stick to th’ 
chapel, but ’tweren’t th’ same thing at all 
after. I hadn’t ’Liza’s voice to follow i’ th’ 
singin’, nor her eyes a-shinin’ acrost their 
heads. And i’ th’ class-meetings they said as 
I mun have some experiences to tell, and I 
hadn’t a word to say for mysen. 

“ Blast and me moped a good deal, and 
happen we didn’t behave ourselves over well, 
for they dropped us, and wondered however 
they’d come to take us up. I can’t tell how 
we got through th’ time, while i’ th’ winter I 
gave up my job and went to Bradford. Old 
Jesse were at th’ door o’ th’ house, in a long 
street o’ little houses. He’d been sendin’ th' 


On Greenhow Hill 247 

children ’way as were clatterin’ their clogs 
in th’ causeway, for she were asleep. 

“ ‘ Is it thee ? ’ he says ; ‘ but you’re not to see 
her. I’ll none have her wakened for a nowt 
like thee. She’s gcin’ fast, and she mun go in 
peace. Thou’lt never be good for naught i’ 
th’ world, and as long as thou lives thou’ll never 
play the big fiddle. Get away, lad, get away 1 ’ 
So he shut the door softly i’ my face. 

“ Nobody never made Jesse my master, but 
It seemed to me he was about right, and I 
went away into the town and knocked up 
against a recruiting sergeant. The old tales 
o’ th’ chapel folk came buzzin’ into my head. 
I was to get away, and this were th’ regular 
road for the likes o’ me. I ’listed there and 
then, took th’ Widow’s shillin’, and had a 
bunch o’ ribbons pinned i’ my hat. 

“ But next day I found my way to David 
Roantree’s door, and Jesse came to open it. 
Says he : ‘ Thou’s come back again wi’ th’ 
devil’s colors flyin’ — ^thy true colors, as I al- 
ways telled thee’. 

“ But I begged and prayed of him to let me 
see her nobbut to say good-by, till a woman 
calls down th’ stairway — she says, ‘ John Lea- 
royd’s to come up.’ Th’ old man shift aside in 
a flash, and lays his hand on my arm, quite 
gentle like. ‘ But thou’lt be quiet, John,’ says 
he, ‘ for she’s rare and weak. Thou wast alius 
a good lad.’ 

“ Her eyes were alive wi’ light, and her hair 


248 On Greenhow Hill 

was thick on the pillow round her, but her 
cheeks were thin — thin to frighten a man 
that’s strong. ‘ Nay, father, yo’ mayn’t say 
th’ devil’s colors. Them ribbons is pretty.’ 
An’ she held out her hands for th’ hat, an’ she 
put all straight as a woman will wi’ ribbons. 
‘ Nay, but what they’re pretty,’ she says. ‘ Eh, 
but I’d ha’ liked to see thee i’ thy red coat, 
John, for thou wast alius my own lad — my 
very own lad, and none else.’ 

“ She lifted up her arms, and they came 
round my neck i’ a gentle grip, and they 
slacked away, and she seemed fainting. ‘ Now 
yo’ mun get away, lad,’ says Jesse, and I 
picked up my hat and I came down-stairs. 

“ Th’ recruiting sergeant were waitin’ for 
me at th’ corner public-house. ‘ Yo’ve seen 
your sweetheart ? ’ says he. ‘Yes, I’ve seen 
her,’ says I. ‘ Well, we’ll have a quart now, 
and you’ll do your best to forget her,’ says he, 
bein’ one o’ them smart, bustlin’ chaps. ‘ Aye, 
sergeant,’ says I. ‘ Forget her.’ And I’ve 
been forgettin’ her ever since.” 

He threw away the wilted clump of white 
violets as he spoke. Ortheris suddenly rose 
to his knees, his rifle at his shoulder, and 
peered across the valley in the clear after- 
noon light. His chin cuddled the stock, and 
there was a twitching of the muscles of the 
right cheek as he sighted. Private Stanley 
Ortheris was engaged on his business. A 
speck of white crawled up the water-course. 


On Greenhow Hill 


249 


“ See that beggar ? Got ’im.” 

Seven hundred yards away, and a full two 
hundred down the hillside, the deserter of the 
Aurangabadis pitched forward, rolled down a 
red rock, and lay very still, with his face in a 
clump of blue gentians, while a big raven 
flapped out of the pine wood to make investi- 
gation. 

“ That’s a clean shot, little man,” said 
Mulvaney. 

. Learoyd thoughtfully watched the smoke 
clear away. 

“ Happen there was a lass tewed up wi’ him, 
too,” said he. Ortheris did not reply. He 
was staring across the valley, with the smile 
of the artist who looks on the completed work. 
For he saw that it was good. 




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COUPON— VOLUME I. 


This coupon, when presented with 
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one in each volume of this edition, en- 
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